Date formatting according to UTC timezones

Question

Using MySQL, php
www.freecrm.x10hosting.com
Before setting up my tables, I need to better understand the
relevance of the datetime and conversion of this field.
I am based in th UK (UTC, Greenwich mean time), but my host
is in the states, which means that the "now" date and time is based
on US time (UTC - ?)
I have done formatting of the date i.e. <?php echo
date('D, d/m/Y',strtotime($datetime['DATETIME'])); ?> but am not
sure how to approach the problem relative to the timezone of any
visitor in the world.
I have a sniffer script which detects the browsers language
but I can't see that being of much use.
The site does require a register/login so I suppose I could
have a UTC preference (i.e. UTC + 3 or whatever) set into their
record. This could then be used something like this.
<?php echo date('D,
d/m/Y',strtotime($datetime['DATETIME']+$row_recordsetuser['UTCTIMEZONEPREFERENCE']));?>
Does this make sense?
I know the formatting is going to be a challenge as well
because the US uses m/d/Y,
Or is there a way of formatting the MySQL data before its
even called?

Answer 1

.oO(RichardODreamweaver)
>Using MySQL, php
>
>
http://www.freecrm.x10hosting.com
>
> Before setting up my tables, I need to better understand
the relevance of the
>datetime and conversion of this field.
>
> I am based in th UK (UTC, Greenwich mean time), but my
host is in the states,
>which means that the "now" date and time is based on US
time (UTC - ?)
Check date_default_timezone_set().
> I have done formatting of the date i.e. <?php echo
date('D,
>d/m/Y',strtotime($datetime['DATETIME'])); ?> but am
not sure how to approach
>the problem relative to the timezone of any visitor in
the world.
You can only deal with your server's timezone setting.
> I have a sniffer script which detects the browsers
language but I can't see
>that being of much use.
It's of absolutely no use. English and Spanish for example
are spoken
all around the world, probably somewhere in almost every
timezone.
> The site does require a register/login so I suppose I
could have a UTC
>preference (i.e. UTC + 3 or whatever) set into their
record.
Possible. If UTC/GMT is not enough, you could let the users
choose the
offset themselves. This is how it's done in many popular
forum scripts.
>This could then
>be used something like this.
>
> <?php echo date('D,
>d/m/Y',strtotime($datetime['DATETIME']+$row_recordsetuser['UTCTIMEZONEPREFERENCE
>']));?>
>
> Does this make sense?
>
> I know the formatting is going to be a challenge as well
because the US uses
>m/d/Y,
YYYY-MM-DD
Works always. ;-)
> Or is there a way of formatting the MySQL data before
its even called?
Of course you can also let MySQL return an already formatted
date, which
is usually the preferred and most efficient way. Have a look
at MySQL's
date and time functions, especially DATE_FORMAT().
Micha