default timezone error in php

Question

I got the following error/warning while tring to install Kohana/SilverStripe.
What does it mean and What do I do for it?

Warning:
date_default_timezone_get():
It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings.
You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function.
In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier.
We selected 'Asia/Calcutta' for '5.5/no DST' instead in C:\Server\apache\htdocs\kohana\system\core\Kohana.php on line 136

Thanks in Advance!

Answer 1

This is not an error, but a warning, so it does not block your app from working.

Explicitly set the right timezone using date_default_timezone_set() in C:\Server\apache\htdocs\kohana\system\core\Kohana.php on line 136

You have to choose among valid timezones

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Edit

As the warning message itself states you actually have a more clean choice then editing a third party software file. I.e. configuring PHP as it should be.

• edit your php.ini and adjust the value of date.timezone = America/New_York

or

• use a php_value directive in your web server config to set it in your vhost configuration or .htaccess: php_value date.timezone America/New_York

Answer 2

The OP's comment to his own question above implies that the default timezone cannot be set in php.ini, which is not true — in fact, in many cases setting it there is preferred. And since this SO answer is one of the first hits in Google for "php default timezone error", I'll save others some lost sanity.

A very common cause of this error is not so much to misspell the zone city or country (e.g. "New York", "Los Angeles") in the php.ini file being used, but instead, to include embedded spaces rather than underscores in the identifier, and thus "misspell" the full constant.

This will also do what you want, without having to set it on every page at runtime (verified on PHP 5.4 and 5.3, in Windows, Linux and OSX):

In php.ini:

[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone = America/New_York
;               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  * Must_Use_Underscores *

Also, if you've checked and re-checked the spelling and are certain it's right, make sure you're editing the actual php.ini file that's being used:

Web context (create a test file test.php, and then confirm the date.timezone there):

 <?php phpinfo(); ?> 

Command line Linux/OSX:

$ php -i | grep "timezone" 

Command line Windows:

C:\> php -i | find "timezone" 

The precedence order for retrieving the default date timezone configuration is spelled out in detail here.

Answer 3

If you don't have the ability to change php.ini, add this to your _ss_environment.php or mysite/_config.php files:

date_default_timezone_set('...');

where ... is one of the valid PHP timezones.