How to Determine a Client\'s Timezone in PHP?

How to Determine a Client's Timezone in PHP

Retrieving a client's timezone can be valuable in various scenarios. This question explores a method to obtain the client's timezone using a combination of JavaScript and PHP, ensuring accurate time display, timezone-specific operations, or geo-targeting.

Solution:

1. PHP Server-Side Code: Create a PHP file and include the following code at the beginning:

<code class="php">session_start();
$timezone = $_SESSION['time'];</code>

This code sets up a session variable named "time" to store the client's timezone.

2. JavaScript Client-Side Code: Add the following code to the HTML head:

<code class="html"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function() {
        if("<?php echo $timezone; ?>".length==0){
            var visitortime = new Date();
            var visitortimezone = "GMT " + -visitortime.getTimezoneOffset()/60;
            $.ajax({
                type: "GET",
                url: "http://domain.com/timezone.php",
                data: 'time='+ visitortimezone,
                success: function(){
                    location.reload();
                }
            });
        }
    });
</script></code>

This script detects if the PHP $timezone variable is empty (indicating a client's timezone has not been set) and retrieves the client's time offset from the browser using JavaScript. It then sends an AJAX request to a PHP script on the server with this offset.

3. Timezone.php Script on Server: Create a new PHP file named timezone.php with the following code:

<code class="php">session_start();
$_SESSION['time'] = $_GET['time'];</code>

This PHP script simply stores the AJAX-sent time offset in the session variable "time".

How it Works:

1. The JavaScript code runs on the client-side and detects a user's timezone offset.
2. If the session variable $timezone is empty (first visit), it sends the offset to timezone.php via AJAX.
3. timezone.php stores the offset in the session variable "time".
4. The client's timezone information can now be accessed on the server-side using $timezone.

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