Getting Correct Time-Zone - Php.ini? .htaccess?

[wilsea]

I'm using $page->created and $page->modified to track  the time users start and finish an activity.  No problem on localhost, but  now that it's on a server there's a 14 hour time difference. 

I figure there must be  a neater fix than adding 14 hours to each record as it is read or created.

PW config file already has $config->timezone = 'Australia/Queensland';

I've tried adding  date.timezone = "Australia/Queensland" to a php.ini file in a directory above my PW project - no change.

Tried adding the same line to PW .htaccess file - and ended up with a 404 until I removed the apparently offending line.

Any suggestions anyone?

[SiNNuT]

You could check via phpinfo() what the value of the "Loaded Configuration File" is. This will point you to the active .ini file. Also, you can check double check the current default timezone on the phpinfo page (search for "Default timezone")

After you set date.timezone in the correct .ini file i think you need to restart Apache for the change to take effect, or contact your webhoster to do this for you.

If that still does not work maybe the value is overridden by some additional .ini files that are parsed. Another thing you could try is date.timezone with single quotes or no quotes.

[Craig]

Check site/config.php - there is an entry for timezone about line ~24:

$config->timezone = 'Europe/London';

[SiNNuT]

Check site/config.php - there is an entry for timezone about line ~24:

$config->timezone = 'Europe/London';

TS already set that value if i read his post correctly

[adrian]

Not really sure if this helps your problem or not (I think maybe not), but is your server in a timezone 14 hours away from QLD? If you need to convert from that to QLD time, you can use a function like this:

function convert_time_zone($date_time, $from_tz, $to_tz){
    $time_object = new DateTime($date_time, new DateTimeZone($from_tz));
    $time_object->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone($to_tz));
    return $time_object->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
}

then call like this:

$qld_time = convert_time_zone($page->created, 'Other/Timezone', 'Australia/Queensland');

[Craig]

TS already set that value if i read his post correctly

Yes it is! Oops - too quick, didn't read fully

[wilsea]

Thankyou all for the suggestions.

Although I've tried changing the setting from $config->timezone = 'Australia/Queensland'; to  $config->timezone = 'America/New_York';  it doesn't seem to make any difference - I guess all that is doing is setting the default value for timezone conversions to start from

On thinking it over I think I'm going to need to convert the time with a function as suggested by Adrian  - I can't be sure that all my users will be in the one timezone so config settings, php.ini  and the like won't be appropriate. 

I've tried Adrian's convert_time_zone function  and get an error    

Failed to parse time string (1405881074) at position 8 (7): Unexpected character .....

and the line number is the first line of the function ie

$time_object = new DateTime($date_time, new DateTimeZone($from_tz));

I think maybe DateTime is expecting the $date_time to be in format '2007-11-30 10:30:19' instead of a big number string that comes from $page->created,  but that's as far as I've got with trying to the convert_time_zone function  working.

Need more guru help please.

[adrian]

Just make sure $page->created is returning the format needed by the function by doing:

date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $page->created);

[wilsea]

Thankyou - working perfectly and solves all my immediate problems.