How do I get the current date and time in PHP?

Question

Which PHP function can return the current date/time?

Answer 1

The time would go by your server time. An easy workaround for this is to manually set the timezone by using date_default_timezone_set before the date() or time() functions are called to.

I'm in Melbourne, Australia so I have something like this:

date_default_timezone_set('Australia/Melbourne');

Or another example is LA - US:

date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');

You can also see what timezone the server is currently in via:

date_default_timezone_get();

So something like:

$timezone = date_default_timezone_get();
echo "The current server timezone is: " . $timezone;

So the short answer for your question would be:

// Change the line below to your timezone!
date_default_timezone_set('Australia/Melbourne');
$date = date('m/d/Y h:i:s a', time());

Then all the times would be to the timezone you just set :)