PHP's DateTime default timezone

Question

I just recently started using the DateTime object in PHP, and now I can't get this figured out.

I thought that DateTime would take into account the default timezone I set with date_default_timezone_set, but apparently it does not:

date_default_timezone_set('Europe/Oslo');
$str = strtotime('2015-04-12');
$date = new DateTime("@".$str);
$response['TZ'] = $date->getTimezone()->getName();
$response['OTZ'] = date_default_timezone_get();
$response['Date'] = $date->format('Y-m-d');

echo json_encode($response);

This is the response I get:

{
  "TZ":"+00:00",
  "OTZ":"Europe\/Oslo",
  "Date":"2015-04-11"
}

Passing the correct DateTimeZone to the constructor is not working either, as DateTime ignores it when it is given an UNIX timestamp. (It works if I am passing a regular date string to the constructor).

If I do this the date comes up correctly:

$date->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone("Europe/Oslo"));

I don't really want to have to pass the timezone along every time I am dealing with a date, but from what it looks like I might have to?

Answer 1

I think it is because of what is written here: http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.construct.php

Note: The $timezone parameter and the current timezone are ignored when the $time parameter either is a UNIX timestamp (e.g. @946684800) or specifies a timezone (e.g. 2010-01-28T15:00:00+02:00).

You use a UNIX time stamp to setup the date for the DateTime object in the constructor.

Try to set the DateTime object using this way

$date = new DateTime('2000-01-01');

Answer 2

Hi you can always use inheritance just to bypass the problem. It's more explicit way

**

class myDate extends DateTime{
    public function __construct($time){
        parent::__construct($time);
        $this->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone("Europe/Oslo"));
    }
}
$str = strtotime('2015-04-12');
$md = new myDate("@".$str);
echo $md->getTimezone()->getName();

**