Converting Timezone String to UTC offset using PHP

Question

I have a Wordpress marketplace store where the "author" of a product has their timezone stored in usermeta in the string format, i.e. Americas/Chicago.

I am wanting to output each user's timezone with a UTC offset instead of string so I can more easily manipulate it. I got this example below from another stack overflow question but it isn't working in my situation.

$timezone = 'America/New_York'; //example string although I am getting the timezone from the database based on each users settings

if(!empty($timezone)) {
    $UTC = new DateTimeZone("UTC");
    $newTZ = new DateTimeZone($timezone);
    $date = new DateTime( $newTZ );
    $date->setTimezone( $UTC);
    echo $date->format('H:i:s');
}

However, this code breaks the page. Can't understand why it would be breaking the page. I put it into a separate function and it still breaks and the error log isn't much help either.

The log says:

DateTime->__construct(Object(DateTimeZone))

It's kind of a bad idea to use offsets! Can you not solve your problem with the DateTimeZone object instead? — Evert
– Evert, Commented Dec 31, 2018 at 20:13
@Evert Hey, I can use all the feedback I can get. The bottom line is, I have these course times in different timezones and I am going to need to translate them based on the current browser's timezone. UTC seems to be the best option for this? Am I wrong? Thx for the input. — CRAIG
– CRAIG, Commented Dec 31, 2018 at 20:22
Converting to UTC might cause some future dates to incorrect. The two major things that impact this is twice-yearly DST changes and changes to the timezone database. If you are doing things with the frontend (in javascript) take a look at the Moment.js package. It supports the same timezone strings. — Evert
– Evert, Commented Dec 31, 2018 at 20:28
Please read "time zone != offset" in the timezone tag wiki. Thanks. — Matt Johnson-Pint
– Matt Johnson-Pint, Commented Dec 31, 2018 at 23:19

John Conde · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-31 19:59:51Z

2

The error message is pretty clear:

Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: DateTime::__construct() expects parameter 1 to be string, object given

The timezone is second parameter for DateTime. So if you want to work with "now' either pass "now" or null as the first parameter.

$timezone = 'America/New_York'; //example string although I am getting the timezone from the database based on each users settings

if(!empty($timezone)) {
    $UTC = new DateTimeZone("UTC");
    $newTZ = new DateTimeZone($timezone);
    $date = new DateTime(null, $newTZ );
    $date->setTimezone( $UTC);
    echo $date->format('H:i:s');
}

answered Dec 31, 2018 at 19:59

John Conde

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