Time Zone

Owner: Nuwan Danushka

Introduction

The Timezone class gives you lists of time zones for drop-downs and a lookup of the client's time zone from their IP address. Get an object through the Util accessor:

$time_zone_object = Util::Timezone();

To convert dates between zones, use Date And Time Manager.

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Time Zone Methods

getTimezone

Description:

The getTimezone method looks up the current time and time zone for the client's IP address. It reads the IP with IpManager::get_client_ip() and sends it to the public timeapi.io service (https://timeapi.io/api/Time/current/ip).

Syntax:

$time_zone_object = Util::Timezone();
$result = $time_zone_object->getTimezone();

if ($result !== null) {
    $zone = $result['timeZone'];   // e.g. "Asia/Colombo"
}

Return Value:

• Array: The decoded JSON response from timeapi.io. It includes keys such as timeZone, dateTime, date, time, dayOfWeek and dstActive.
• null: The client IP could not be read, the request failed, or the response was not valid JSON.

💡 This makes an outbound HTTP request on every call, so the server needs internet access and the call adds latency. On a local machine the client IP is 127.0.0.1 or ::1, which the service cannot place, so expect null. The IP comes from headers a client can set; see IP Manager.

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createTimezoneList

Description:

The createTimezoneList static method returns every time zone ID that PHP knows from DateTimeZone::listAbbreviations(), without duplicates, sorted alphabetically.

Syntax:

$zones = Timezone::createTimezoneList();
// ['Africa/Abidjan', 'Africa/Accra', 'Africa/Addis_Ababa', ...]

Return Value:

• Array: A list of time zone ID strings, indexed from 0. It is never false.

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timezoneList

Description:

The timezoneList method returns a fixed list of 424 time zones with display labels, ordered by UTC offset from GMT -11:00 to GMT +14:00. Use it to fill a time zone picker.

Syntax:

$time_zone_object = Util::Timezone();
$result = $time_zone_object->timezoneList();
// [
//   ['name' => 'Pacific/Pago_Pago', 'value' => '(GMT -11:00) Pago Pago'],
//   ...
//   ['name' => 'Asia/Colombo', 'value' => '(GMT +05:30) Colombo'],
//   ...
// ]

Return Value:

• Array: One row per time zone, each with two keys:
  • name: The time zone ID, such as Asia/Colombo. Store this value.
  • value: The display label, such as (GMT +05:30) Colombo.

The offsets in the labels are fixed text. They show standard time and don't change during daylight saving time. The method's code still has a false branch for an empty list, but the list is hard-coded, so it always returns rows.

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