[FX.php List] Which time to use for international application?

[Bob Patin]

Jonathan,

If your site's visitors are from multiple time zones, and they login to use the app, I would probably store the user's time zone in his record, and on the site adjust the stored timestamp (or date) based on their stored zone. What time zone is used to store timestamps on the server is irrelevant in that case, since you're adjusting it according to each user's location.

If your site needs to always show one specific time zone, it's almost arbitrary, IMO; I would probably go with the zone where the bulk of the users reside, where possible.

The PHP date() calcs are easy to use... I'm doing this from memory, but I think the formula for lowering the time by an hour is

date("h:i:s" getastime($mytime)-3600) to reduce by an hour...

Best,

Bob Patin



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> I presume you want "raw"/neutral data in your database, so I guess you want to store it according to some standard time like GMT or something. Then in the application itself display the date adjusted to the current time. That's just how I think about it.
> 
> 22 jan 2010 kl. 20.17 skrev Jonathan Schwartz:
> 
>> Hi Folks,
>> 
>> Any words of wisdom on which time to use in a web application intended to be used worldwide and display time stamped information back on the web page.? Company is based in California. Server is too, but it may not always be.. Then, there's the users's local time. And then there's UTC.
>> 
>> Advice?
>> 
>> J
>> -- 
>> Jonathan Schwartz
>> Exit 445 Group
>> jonathan at exit445.com
>> http://www.exit445.com
>> 415-370-5011
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