Generate UTC TimeStamps By Range

[JustinK101]

I need the following:

 

Generate a UTC date and time stamp from now() to (now() - 7) days exactly. So basically two values.

 

How can I do this?

[corbin]

time()

time()-60*60*24*7

[Jeremysr]

time() returns the current timestamp in GMT (which is the same as UTC, right?) So here are the two values you want:

 

$now = time();
$seven_days_ago = $now - 60*60*24*7;

 

60*60*24*7 is the number of seconds in 7 days (60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 7 days.)

[JustinK101]

Corbin:

 

Close, but that is a EPOCH. Those returned:

 

1225082910 AND 1224478110

 

The values I need, are going to be feed into MySQL so they need to be in the format of: '2008-10-26 9:49:40'

[Jeremysr]

date() will format a timestamp into a string for you. It looks like you want something like this:

 

$date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $timestamp);

[JustinK101]

Something is very wrong here:

 

echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time());

 

Returns: 2008-10-27 00:24:21

 

This is not right, UTC time should be 2008-10-27 05:24:21. Any ideas?

[Fruct0se]

Something is very wrong here:

 

echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time());

 

Returns: 2008-10-27 00:24:21

 

This is not right, UTC time should be 2008-10-27 05:24:21. Any ideas?

 

havent tried this but it should work...

echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time() - 18000);

[JustinK101]

Is time localized instead of UTC then?

 

[Fruct0se]

Where is your server located?

[JustinK101]

That's the point, I need the date/time to be static, meaning wherever the server is, the date/time is always the same. We actually are going to have web servers located on both the west and east coast, both running the same PHP application. Basically every date/time must be stored in UTC in the database.

[Fruct0se]

How about

gmdate("Y-m-d H:i:s", time());

 

Since GMT is the same as UTC this will always return the proper UTC time.

[JustinK101]

FructOse:

 

Ahh, ok that seems to work. Thanks.

[Fruct0se]

So if you wanted the current UTC timestamp and your UTC - 7 days this would be the easy way to do it:

 

echo gmdate("Y-m-d H:i:s", time());
echo gmdate("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime("-7 days"));