Twitter timezone & created_at (utc time) values to calculate what time zone the user is in

Question

I'm trying to estimate a twitter user's location based on the time_zone or created_at value in a given tweet object. However it seems that all created_at values I've come across are just in a pointless localised time and the time zone they supply isn't in the most helpful format

example tweet

"created_at":"Thu Jun 02 14:41:24 +0000 2011"
"time_zone":null

OR

"created_at":"Sun Jan 09 05:03:52 +0000 2011"
"time_zone":"Mountain Time (US & Canada)"

Both of these times aren't in UTC time and the time_zone isn't in any particular standard format with the rest of the world

I'm probably coming across really annoying, I'm tired and hot and been looking for this solution for too long :|

thanks,

Andy

Answer 1

This answer details how to convert a Twitter date into something PHP can work with; synopsis below.

strtotime("dateString"); gets it into the native PHP date format, then you can work with the date() function to get it printed out how you'd like it.

As for the time zone, you can use the value of the utc_offset property of the user object to calculate it. For example, my profile's utc_offset is:

"utc_offset":-21600

Just divide that value by 3600 and that will give you -6, which is the US Central time zone. These will be absolute offsets and will not change whether the time zone honors daylight savings time.