Ciao

Thanx alot.

New York standard time (gmtoff) is -5 hours (300). And there is one DST (dstoff) in action since March 9th, of +1 hour (60). And that's exactly what the timezones information says.

Also, I've tried the usergetdate() function, asking for America/New_York times and results obtained from Moodle are exactly the same than the ones at: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=179

So... what are you getting? Correct or incorrect results?

Ciao

I just installed 1.9+ (I didn't before) and checked the function .. when I tried this:

$mktime = mktime(14, 0, 0, 4 ,09, 2008);
$userDate = usergetdate($mktime,'America/New_York');
$mktime2 = mktime($userDate['hours'], $userDate['minutes'], 0, $userDate['mon'] , $userDate['mday'], $userDate['year']);
$sessionTm2 = date('g:i a.',$mktime2);
print $sessionTm2;

I get 9:00 AM .. but as the site (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=179) .. it should be 10:00AM (14 = 2:00PM GMT)

Is that right?

You need to use Moodle functions to guarantee that everything is ok, without mixing php functions (mktime, date...) with moodle functions (usergetdate).

So, to get the GMT timestamp of one date... you need to execute:

$timestamp = make_timestamp(2008, 4, 9, 14, 0, 0, 'America/New_York');

And then you can handle that GMT timestamp as you prefer, for example:

• To print the date of that GMT timestamp in different cities (timezones):
  echo userdate($timestamp, '', 'America/New_York');
  echo userdate($timestamp, '', 'Spanin/Madrid');

• To get the date components of that GMT timestamp in different cities (timezones):
  print_object( usergetdate($timestamp, 'America/New_York'));
  print_object( usergetdate($timestamp, 'Europe/Madrid'));

But, as you see, ALWAYS using Moodle functions that will handle both the timezone and the dst properly.

Note also, that if you doesn't use the timezone parameter in the functions above... then the user timezone will be used automatically (normal Moodle behaviour).

Ciao

as you said .. I installed the new time functions in (moodlelib.php) .. I can't replace all files because the semester not finished yet.
so yep .. it is working fine , but one thing I want to mention plz:

for this code:

$timestamp = make_timestamp(2008, 4, 9, 14, 0, 0, 'America/New_York');
echo userdate($timestamp, '', 'America/New_York');

the result will be:
Wednesday, 9 April 2008, 02:00 PM ... which is wrong.

but if you write:

$timestamp = make_timestamp(2008, 4, 9, 14, 0, 0); // WITHOUT TIMEZONE
echo userdate($timestamp, '', 'America/New_York');

the result will be:
Wednesday, 9 April 2008, 10:00 AM ... which is right.

Really thanx alot Eloy.

I really don't understand why you say that this is wrong:

$timestamp = make_timestamp(2008, 4, 9, 14, 0, 0, 'America/New_York');
echo userdate($timestamp, '', 'America/New_York');

the result will be:
Wednesday, 9 April 2008, 02:00 PM ... which is wrong.

It's perfect IMO. If you request one timestamp for NY and then print it (also for NY) time must be EXACTLY the original one. It's a trivial case.

Problem arrive when you MIX functions using and not using the timezone explicitly, because then, your server timezone is used by default. So, your second example is really dependent of your server timezone, because you request one timestamp using your server timezone (4 hours before NY) and then want to print what time is in NY (4 hours after you).

I really don't understand why you say the 1st example is wrong, one NY timestamp will show one NY userdate, so they MUST be equal (in fact something would be really wrong if that caused different times to be shown).

Ciao

oh .. sorry .. I understand your example in pre-comment in a wrong way.

Thanx a lot for clarification.

great, it's really not easy to explain nor to understand... thanks!

Ciao