note 117251 added to function.time

I think the documentation regarding PHP time-related functions and time zones is a bit confusing. Let's suppose we live in Berlin, which has time zone "Europe/Berlin" and it's UTC+1 in winter and UTC+2 in summer. This means that for 10:00 UTC+0, the local time in Berlin is 11:00 in winter and 12:00 in summer. The results using different methods to get the timestamp are: <?php ini_set('date.timezone', 'Europe/Berlin'); $time1 = date('H:i:s', time() - date('Z')); // 10:00:00 $time2 = date('H:i:s', gmdate('U')); // 12:00:00 $time3 = date('H:i:s', time()); // 12:00:00 ini_set('date.timezone', 'UTC'); $time4 = date('H:i:s', time() - date('Z')); // 10:00:00 $time5 = date('H:i:s', gmdate('U')); // 10:00:00 $time6 = date('H:i:s', time()); // 10:00:00 ?> So, if you want to ensure UTC+0 timestamp in any environment, use this: <?php $timestamp = time() - date('Z'); ?> The other methods, including time(), will produce different results depending on the value of 'date.timezone'. This is extremely important if you have multiple servers across different countries, and you want to run all of them using UTC+0 without worrying about the particular time zone in which the server is located. The alternative, of course, is calling ini_set('date.timezone', 'UTC'); at the very beginning. ---- Server IP: 72.52.91.14 Probable Submitter: 83.34.216.80 ---- Manual Page -- http://php.net/manual/en/function.time.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/117251 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/117251/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/117251/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/117251/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/117251/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/117251/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/117251/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/117251 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/117251 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php