How to get WordPress Time Zone setting?

8 comments

1. if you need the gmt_offset then

   <?php echo get_option('gmt_offset'); ?>

   this will give you an integer like 2 or -2.

   and if you need the timezone string use

   <?php echo get_option('timezone_string'); ?>

   this will give you a string like America/Indianapolis

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2. The unfortunate situation is that there are indeed two different options:

   1. Newer timezone_string, which saves PHP–style time zone.
   2. Older gmt_offset, which saves numeric float offset in hours.

   But in newer environments timezone_string actually overrides gmt_offset, the value returned by the latter will be based on the former. However the opposite isn’t true — gmt_offset might be valid, while timezone_string is empty.

   WordPress 5.3 had shipped wp_timezone() function, that abstracts this and returns a valid DateTimeZone object, regardless of underlying WP settings.

   Before that I had a take on it implemented in my WpDateTime library (for trivia that was used as a basis for core implementation):

   class WpDateTimeZone extends DateTimeZone {
       /**
        * Determine time zone from WordPress options and return as object.
        *
        * @return static
        */
       public static function getWpTimezone() {
           $timezone_string = get_option( 'timezone_string' );
           if ( ! empty( $timezone_string ) ) {
               return new static( $timezone_string );
           }
           $offset  = get_option( 'gmt_offset' );
           $hours   = (int) $offset;
           $minutes = abs( ( $offset - (int) $offset ) * 60 );
           $offset  = sprintf( '%+03d:%02d', $hours, $minutes );
           return new static( $offset );
       }
   }
   

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3. Check the Option Reference page. The option gmt_offset returns an integer. For example, if the timezone is set to Eastern time (e.g. America/New_York), gmt_offset should be -5.

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4. Given the fact that wordpress keeps the timezone string in the options table, you can use the object oriented way of getting the right time on your wordpress site:

   $tz = new DateTimeZone(get_option('timezone_string'));
   $dt = new DateTime("now", $tz);
   
   $page .= "<p> DateTime " . $dt->format("Y-m-d H:i:s") . "</p>";
   

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5. Don’t think you’re gonna get a string like US/Eastern without storing all the strings you want in an array and referring to them. Using PHP you can get the timezone abbreviation, ie EST; and if you have those values stored in an array with the strings you want, you can look them up.

   <?php date_default_timezone_set(get_option('timezone_string'));
   
         echo date('T'); // will give you three-character string like "EST"
   
         $timezones = array (
             'EST' => 'US/Eastern',
             'CST' => 'US/Central',
             // etc, etc, etc.
             );
   
         echo $timezones [ date('T') ]; // should be what you want.
    ?>
   

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6. To add to Bainternet (I am adding this as an answer because I cannot comment — I have less than 50 points on WP Development stack).

   WordPress will only store a timezone string if you select a timezone string in the general settings. UTF selection is where it defaults in the list, but you can scroll way up to timezone strings. If you set a timezone string, both the UTF and the Timezone string will be set. They will be the same (meaning, the UTF gets reset to the new zone when you select a timezone string timezone).

   (WordPress 4)

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7. There are a few options, none of which really work great. This is a WordPress bug, and it genuinely sucks because the time is wrong unless you set your site to UTC… which is confusing and not always even possible.

   This next code I think only works if you choose your Timezone (Under Settings -> General in admin) as a named city instead of by an GMT number offset. I haven’t tested this but it’s very possible that get_option('gmt_offset') is set when get_option('timezone_string') is not.

   date_default_timezone_set(get_option('timezone_string'));
   

   The downside of this is that WordPress assumes PHP is set to UTC when making mysql timestamps, so you can mess up your database a little bit whenever you switch timezones! Not to mention other WP plugins may assume that the PHP environment is always in UTC.

   So, if you just want a correct time — you can force your timestamp to be in UTC with:

   get_post_time('c', true); //should work for non-post objects.
   

   Unfortunately, although correct, it’ll make the timezone get set to UTC.

   And note that you can’t both use the “true” flag and the default timezone_set function.

   Any proper solution is gonna be a code-snippet that accounts for both gmt_offset AND timezone_string and uses them to set a timezone on some input. WP assumes that PHP set to UTC when doing mysql timestamps, and it might break other plugins.

   There’s one such solution on https://www.skyverge.com/blog/down-the-rabbit-hole-wordpress-and-timezones/ but, again this is a BUG, so you should use the get_post_time($date_format, TRUE) code to get a timestamp that is actually correct.

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8. Like Rarst said, you can now use wp_timezone() which returns a timezone object.

   Or to get the timezone as a string, wp_timezone_string(), which returns ‘Europe/Rome’, ‘UTC’, or the UTC offset like ‘-6:00’.

   And if you want the abbreviation, wp_date('T') also returns the localized timezone.

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