force php strtotime to use UTC
I've seen a few questions about this but not a clear answer... strtotime() will use the default timezone set for PHP when converting the string to a unix timestamp.
However, I want to convert a string to unix timestamp in UTC. Since there is no parameter for doing so, how can this be done?
The string I'm trying to convert is: 2011-10-27T20:23:39, which is already in UTC. I want to represent that as a unix timestamp also in UTC.
Thank you
Answer
I realize this question is very old, but I found another option that can be helpful. Instead of setting and then reverting php's time zone, you can specify the timezone as a part of the string you pass to strtotime like so:
echo date_default_timezone_get();
output: America/Chicago
echo gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('2011-10-27T20:23:39'));
output: 2011-10-28 01:23:39
echo gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('2011-10-27T20:23:39 America/Chicago'));
output: 2011-10-28 01:23:39
echo gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('2011-10-27T20:23:39 UTC'));
output 2011-10-27 20:23:39
Note: I am on PHP 5.5.9, but this should work in any php version.