PHP UTC String to date

Question

I have a problem. In my code I have the following line:

$RunDateTimeGMT0 = "2017-12-31 23:00:00";

The goal is to get the previous and next hour, so I tried this:

$RunDateTimeGMT0 = "2017-12-31 23:00:00";
$epochRunDateTimeGMT0 = strtotime($RunDateTimeGMT0);
$previousEpochDateTimeGMT0 = $epochRunDateTimeGMT0 - 3600;
$nextEpochDateTimeGMT0 = $epochRunDateTimeGMT0 + 3600;

But then the I get the following result:

previousEpochDateTimeGMT0 -> 2017-12-31 21:00:00
nextEpochDateTimeGMT0 -> 2017-12-31 23:00:00

Because of my timezone (+1) the RunDateTimeGMT0 gets converted to a date of my timezone. I want the following result:

validEpochDateTimeGMT0 -> 2017-12-31 22:00:00
nextEpochDateTimeGMT0 -> 2018-01-01 00:00:00

How can I keep the date object UTC?

Answer 1

You can use the Carbon library. after import this library you should parse the date with this:

$RunDateTimeGMT0 = "2017-12-31 23:00:00";
$epochRunDateTimeGMT0 = Carbon::parse($RunDateTimeGMT0);

in this link , you could see the documentation of Carbon. Although, maybe you should to use this method:

$previousEpochDateTimeGMT0 = $epochRunDateTimeGMT0->addminutes(60);
$nextEpochDateTimeGMT0 = $epochRunDateTimeGMT0->subminutes(60);

I hope your problem solve with these lines, If another issue occurred you can ask.

Answer 2

@Ebrahim Bashirpour already shared a way of doing this by using the Carbon library but you can also do this by just using the PHP Datetime class. It supports both add time and subtracts time in seconds. Take a look at the DateTime documentation for more details.

<?php
    $RunDateTimeGMT0 = "2017-12-31 23:00:00";

    $date = new \DateTime($RunDateTimeGMT0);
    $date->add(new \DateInterval('PT3600S')); //add 3600s / 1 hour
    $next_epoc = $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // 2018-01-01 00:00:00


    $date = new \DateTime($RunDateTimeGMT0);
    $date->sub(new \DateInterval('PT3600S'));//add 3600s / 1 hour
    $previous_epoc = $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); //2017-12-31 22:00:00

    var_dump($next_epoc);
    var_dump($previous_epoc);
?>