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PHP 8.1 DateTimeZone issues when converting UTC to local timezone with daylight saving time

πŸ‘€ Views: 237 πŸ’¬ Answers: 1 πŸ“… Created: 2025-06-12
php datetime timezone php8.1 PHP

I'm migrating some code and I've tried everything I can think of but I'm optimizing some code but I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer. I'm working on a personal project and I'm having trouble correctly converting UTC timestamps to local time using PHP 8.1. I have the following code that retrieves a UTC timestamp from my database and converts it to a local time zone, but it seems to miscalculate during daylight saving time changes. Here’s the code: ```php $utcDateTime = new DateTime('2023-03-12 10:00:00', new DateTimeZone('UTC')); $localTimeZone = new DateTimeZone('America/New_York'); $localDateTime = $utcDateTime; $localDateTime->setTimezone($localTimeZone); ``` When I run this, I expect to get '2023-03-12 06:00:00' as the local time; however, I get '2023-03-12 05:00:00'. This discrepancy seems to arise specifically around daylight saving time, as it switches on March 12, 2023. I also tried using `DateTimeImmutable`, but the behavior remains the same. I checked that my system timezone settings are correct and even updated the timezone database using `sudo apt-get install --reinstall tzdata`. I’ve also confirmed that the server is set to UTC. Is there something I'm missing in the way PHP handles time zones, particularly regarding daylight saving adjustments? What is the best practice for reliably converting UTC to local time when daylight saving time is involved? My development environment is Ubuntu. What's the best practice here? What's the best practice here? Am I approaching this the right way? I'm developing on Ubuntu 22.04 with Php. Is there a simpler solution I'm overlooking?