Update:
This will now create a DateTime
object in the user's DateTimeZone
('America/New_York'). And then it will set that object's timezone to UTC. To get the timestamp (or other string representations of date), use ::format()
.
# Create NY date
$NY = new DateTimeZone("America/New_York");
$NYdate = new DateTime('5/13/2014 3:00 PM', $NY);
# Set timezone to UTC
$UTC = new DateTimeZone("UTC");
$UTCdate = $NYdate->setTimezone($UTC);
# Get timestamp (PHP 5.2 compatible)
$timezone = $UTCdate->format('U');
var_dump($timezone); // a string containing UNIX timestamp
First I create 2 DateTime
objects based off of their respective DateTimeZone
objects. Then we can either use OOP ::diff()
to get another object containing information about the time difference. Or we can use simple integers representing the difference in seconds from ::getTimestamp
.
$date = '5/13/2014 3:00 PM';
# Create NY date
$NY = new DateTimeZone("America/New_York");
$NYdate = new DateTime($date, $NY);
# Create UTC date
$UTC = new DateTimeZone("UTC");
$UTCdate = new DateTime($date, $UTC);
# Find difference object
$diff = $NYdate->diff($UTCdate);
var_dump($diff); // a DateInterval object containing time difference info
# Find difference in seconds
$diff = $NYdate->getTimestamp() - $UTCdate->getTimestamp();
var_dump($diff); // an integer containing time difference in seconds
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