php convert datetime to UTC

Question

I am in need of an easy way to convert a date time stamp to UTC (from whatever timezone the server is in) HOPEFULLY without using any libraries.

Answer 1

If you have a date in this format YYYY-MM-HH dd:mm:ss, you can actually trick php by adding a UTC at the end of your "datetime string" and use strtotime to convert it.

date_default_timezone_set('Europe/Stockholm');
print date('Y-m-d H:i:s',strtotime("2009-01-01 12:00"." UTC"))."\n";
print date('Y-m-d H:i:s',strtotime("2009-06-01 12:00"." UTC"))."\n";

This will print this:

2009-01-01 13:00:00
2009-06-01 14:00:00

And as you can see it takes care of the daylight savings time problem as well.

A little strange way to solve it.... :)