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I begain this quest to grab the date that this document was updated HERE but given my limited knowledge on this subject I hit a few road blocks.

  1. How to get to the actual time-stamp I desired.

a snip of the above XML file looks like:

     <data type="current observations">
         <time-layout time-coordinate="local">
              <start-valid-time period-name="current">2013-05-27T13:53:00-04:00</start-valid-time>
         </time-layout>
      </data>

I attempted the following but got an Invalid expression warning. 

  $weather = simplexml_load_file('http://...');
  $time=$weather->xpath('//data[@type="current observations"]/"time-layout"/"start-valid-   time"');
  echo $time[0];

Hoping to get the following : 2013-05-27T13:53:00-04:00

Next i tried to set the default time zone based off this. I know that the -04:00 on the back of the time stamp is a indication of the difference from UTC. The following was a solution I hacked together and it works but Im not real fond of the method so any improvements or suggestions on how to do this better would be better.

  $time_UTC= substr($time,0,-6);
  $offset = substr($time,19,-3);
  $offsetfloat = (float)$offset;
  $timezoneName = timezone_name_from_abbr("", $offsetfloat*3600, false);
  date_default_timezone_set($timezoneName);
tyler
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1 Answers1

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For your xpath-question - you were almost there, try:

$time = $weather->xpath("//data[@type='current observations']/time-layout/start-valid-time");
echo $time[0];

with PHP >= 5.4, do this to get the first element only:

$time = $weather->xpath("//data[@type='current observations']/time-layout/start-valid-time")[0];
echo $time;

see it working: http://codepad.viper-7.com/PqPnzY

Can't help with the timezone-issue, not my area.

michi
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  • Thanks so much for your reply i am trying now! – tyler May 27 '13 at 21:00
  • Ahh I was close lol! Thanks alot I will give you a check just going to see if anyone has any input on the time-zone! – tyler May 27 '13 at 21:04
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    @tman: might be useful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5639733/changing-current-user-timezone-based-on-server-utc-offset-and-user-utc-offset?rq=1 – michi May 27 '13 at 21:18