What's the best way to manage dates across PHP, MySQL, etc?

Question

My server is in Dallas. I\'m in New York City.. and both PHP and MySQL have configuration variables for setting the timezone.

How do I get them all to work together

Answer 1

The mysql-server stores dates in a timezone independent format (UTC).
But before it stores the date it will be converted using its timezone.

U can change the mysql timezone per connection *1:

mysql_query('SET time_zone = "'.$timezone.'"');

You can also change the timezone per script.

date_default_timezone_set($timezone);

If you set them to the same timezone "2009-01-10 13:30:00" will mean the same thing to both mysql and php.

But keep in mind that the 2 servers have different internal clock values, so if you want to generate timestamps based on current time. Do that in mysql OR php.

*1) MySQL timezone support may require additional configuration. check the manual