Given the following string date: Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100 (GMT Daylight Time)
in php if I do a strtotime on the above, and then convert it back to a string date, it seems to gain an hour.
echo $str_date," Vs ",date("c",strtotime($str_date));
Produces:
Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100 (GMT Daylight Time) Vs 2011-09-02T22:00:00+01:00
I realise this is to do with daylight savings, but how does one compensate for this?
I think you misunderstanding,
there is not day light saving in this case,
BUT GMT, you gain one hour because of that
in my timezone (GMT+8)
php -r "echo date('r', strtotime('Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100'));"
Sat, 03 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0800
which I gain 7 hours, due to GMT+8 - GMT+1 = 7
Which PHP version do you use? What is your date.timezone setting? I'm asking because I cannot reproduce your output running PHP 5.3.6 on Mac OS X:
$str_date = 'Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100 (GMT Daylight Time)';
echo $str_date," Vs ",date("c",strtotime($str_date));
// Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100 (GMT Daylight Time) Vs 1970-01-01T01:00:00+01:00
This is correct because Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100 (GMT Daylight Time) is not a valid date/time string.
$str_date = 'Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100';
echo $str_date," Vs ",date("c",strtotime($str_date));
// Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100 Vs 2011-09-02T22:00:00+02:00
This is correct because I'm in GMT+2.
I realise this is to do with daylight savings, but how does one compensate for this?
By not using date() and strtotime(); the DateTime class is preferred.
$str_date = 'Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100';
$datetime = new DateTime($str_date);
echo $datetime->format('c'); // 2011-09-02T21:00:00+01:00
or in procedural style
$str_date = 'Fri Sep 02 2011 21:00:00 GMT+0100';
echo date_format(date_create($str_date), 'c'); // 2011-09-02T21:00:00+01:00
Aside: if you wish to still use date()/strtotime() then, as the other answers and your own observations show, you need to be careful with the time zones in use in the date string and your script.
Seems like strtotime() renders your time as SOAP format: YY "-" MM "-" DD "T" HH ":" II ":" SS frac tzcorrection?
result is:
"2008-07-01T22:35:17.02", "2008-07-01T22:35:17.03+08:00"
You can try to format your time string as some other time format. Look in http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.formats.compound.php
