👀 Views: 41 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-07

php datetime timezone PHP

I'm writing unit tests and I'm having trouble with I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer... I've looked through the documentation and I'm still confused about I'm working with a strange scenario with PHP's `date()` function when trying to format dates after adjusting for timezones..... I have a web application running on PHP 8.1, and I'm using the `DateTime` and `DateTimeZone` classes to handle timezones properly. However, when I set a timezone and then call `date()`, I’m not getting the expected output. Here's a snippet of my code: ```php $date = new DateTime('2023-10-01 12:00:00'); $date->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('America/New_York')); $formattedDate = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $date->getTimestamp()); echo $formattedDate; ``` The expected output should be `2023-10-01 12:00:00` for New York timezone, but instead, it shows `2023-10-01 16:00:00`. I also tried using `DateTime::format()` directly: ```php $formattedDate = $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); echo $formattedDate; ``` This returns the correct timezone-adjusted date: `2023-10-01 12:00:00`. It's clear that the scenario is with the way I'm using `date()` in conjunction with the timestamp from the `DateTime` object. I've checked the server settings, and the default timezone is correctly set to `America/New_York`. Is there a reason why `date()` is not respecting the timezone adjustments made on the `DateTime` object? What is the best practice for formatting dates to ensure I'm getting the correct timezone-specific output? My development environment is Ubuntu. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. I'm using Php stable in this project. Cheers for any assistance! Cheers for any assistance!