How can I get the user's local time instead of the server's time?

Question

How can I get the time of the client side? When I use date() it returns server's time.

Answer 1

Here's a "PHP" solution:

echo '<script type="text/javascript">
var x = new Date()
document.write(x)
</script>';

Answer 2

As mentioned by everyone PHP only displays server side time.

For client side, you would need Javascript, something like the following should do the trick.

var currentTime = new Date();
var hours = currentTime.getHours();
var minutes = currentTime.getMinutes();

if (minutes < 10) {
    minutes = "0" + minutes;
}

document.write("<b>" + hours + ":" + minutes + " " + "</b>");

And if you want the AM/PM suffix, something like the following should work:

var currentTime = new Date();
var hours = currentTime.getHours();
var minutes = currentTime.getMinutes();

var suffix = "AM";

if (hours >= 12) {
    suffix = "PM";
    hours = hours - 12;
}

if (hours == 0) {
    hours = 12;
}

if (minutes < 10) {
    minutes = "0" + minutes;
}

document.write("<b>" + hours + ":" + minutes + " " + suffix + "</b>");

Here is a list of additional JavaScript Date and Time functions you could mess around with.

Answer 3

You could possibly use Geolocation by IP Address to work out which country the user is in, and then use that.

But using Javascript or letting the user choose a Timezone will probably be better.