note 56392 added to ref.datetime

I was having a horrible time trying to get a good list of timezones, how to set them locally (for the user/client), and how best to keep this information. Building on the notes of this site (thanks everyone), I constructed code that should work on just about any un*x based platform. It reads the local timezone table and gives your a nested array of the continents and regions of the file -- the natural continent sorting is even by the most populated areas (thanks Paul Eggert!). Afterwards, all you have to do is export the timezone string with an environmental set.. which works just fine if php is running as an apache model; haven't tested it for commandline, but I suspect it's okay there, too. <?php if (isset($_SESSION[PROFILE_TZOFFSET])) putenv('TZ='.$_SESSION[PROFILE_TZOFFSET]); ?> Here's how to load the timezones... the nested array makes it easy to insert into html lists or other well-behaved objects. <?php function getTimezoneData() { //EricZ - 9/1/05 - free to use, keep the comments :) $zoneNames = array(); // -- first part, gather all of the zone data $zoneSource = '/usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab'; $zoneHandle = fopen($zoneSource, "r"); if (!$zoneHandle) return NULL; //bad file, abort now while (!feof($zoneHandle)) { $zoneLine = ltrim(fgets($zoneHandle, 4096)); if ($zoneLine[0]=='#') continue; //skip comments //Columns... // 1. ISO 3166 2-character country code. // 2. Latitude and longitude of the zone's principal location // 3. Zone name used in value of TZ environment variable. // 4. Comments; present if and only if country has multiple rows. $zoneParts = explode("\t",$zoneLine); //grab parts if (count($zoneParts) < 3) continue; //erroneous line! $nameParts = explode('/', $zoneParts[2], 2); //grab country/name $zoneKey = $nameParts[0]; //country or area $insertArray = &$zoneNames; //where to insert? if (count($nameParts) > 1) { //area/populous if (!isset($zoneNames[$zoneKey])) //not set before $zoneNames[$zoneKey] = array(); $insertArray = &$zoneNames[$zoneKey]; //grab sub (country) $zoneKey = trim($nameParts[1]); //grab correct key } $zoneKey = preg_replace('/[_]/',' ', $zoneKey); $insertArray[$zoneKey] = trim($zoneParts[2]); //actually set data } //end while not eof fclose($zoneHandle); return $zoneNames; } ?> ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.datetime.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+56392 Delete: added to the manual -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+56392&report=yes&reason=added+to+the+manual Delete: bad code -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+56392&report=yes&reason=bad+code Delete: spam -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+56392&report=yes&reason=spam Delete: useless -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+56392&report=yes&reason=useless Delete: non-english -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+56392&report=yes&reason=non-english Delete: other reasons -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+56392&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+56392&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php