How to get Unix timestamp in php based on timezone

Question

Code first

    echo time() . '<br/>';
echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s') . '<br/>';
date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York'); 

echo time() . '<br/>';
print_r($timezones[$timezone] . '<br/>');
echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s') . '<br/>';

In the above code the date is printed according to timezone but unix timestamp is same even after setting default timezone

How can we print unix timestamp according to timezone?

Answer 1

The answer provided by Volkerk (that says timestamps are meant to be always UTC based) is correct, but if you really need a workaround (to make timezone based timestamps) look at my example.

<?php

//default timezone
$date = new DateTime(null);
echo 'Default timezone: '.$date->getTimestamp().'<br />'."\r\n";

//America/New_York
$date = new DateTime(null, new DateTimeZone('America/New_York'));
echo 'America/New_York: '.$date->getTimestamp().'<br />'."\r\n";

//Europe/Amsterdam
$date = new DateTime(null, new DateTimeZone('Europe/Amsterdam'));
echo 'Europe/Amsterdam: '.$date->getTimestamp().'<br />'."\r\n";

echo 'WORK AROUND<br />'."\r\n";
// WORK AROUND
//default timezone
$date = new DateTime(null);
echo 'Default timezone: '.($date->getTimestamp() + $date->getOffset()).'<br />'."\r\n";

//America/New_York
$date = new DateTime(null, new DateTimeZone('America/New_York'));
echo 'America/New_York: '.($date->getTimestamp() + $date->getOffset()).'<br />'."\r\n";

//Europe/Amsterdam
$date = new DateTime(null, new DateTimeZone('Europe/Amsterdam'));
echo 'Europe/Amsterdam: '.($date->getTimestamp() + $date->getOffset()).'<br />'."\r\n";
?>

Get the regular timestamp and add the UTC offset