64

Can someone tell me how to get the time zone that is set in the WordPress Admin?

For example, if the blog is set to Eastern time, I need this exact string to print out:

US/Eastern

This is for a function that lives in functions.php in my theme.

8 Answers 8

95

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

3
  • 7
    My timezone_string is in the database but it is empty, even after selecting a different timezone on the settings page. What might be the case? (WP3.6) Sep 13, 2013 at 22:48
  • Does gmt_offest take daylight savings into account based on the site's timezone setting? Dec 19, 2013 at 4:04
  • 7
    @user2019515 If you choose a city as a timezone it will save to the "timezone_string" option but if you choose a Manual Offset (UTC+1 for instance) it is saved to the "gmt_offset" option (as "1") and timezone_string remains empty.
    – Berend
    Mar 27, 2017 at 18:06
26

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 );
    }
}
7
  • 2
    This should be the accepted answer. People will run into bugs if they rely solely on get_option('timezone_string'). Aug 14, 2018 at 20:25
  • 1
    This is the correct answer. Dec 9, 2018 at 15:41
  • Isnt use of (int) for $hours and floor for $minutes problematic? According to documentation, (int) and floor are almost the same except (int) will round -4.5 to -4 and floor will round it to -5. This seems like it will give incorrect negative timezone offsets?
    – Mikepote
    May 13, 2019 at 13:22
  • 1
    @Mikepote yeah, this was fixed in the lib a long time ago, just stale copy of the code in the answer here.
    – Rarst
    May 15, 2019 at 10:54
  • Oh my god why did they implement it like this .... It costed me a full hour tilt
    – Blackbam
    Jun 21, 2019 at 15:29
9

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.

0
3

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>";
2

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.
 ?>
1
1

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)

1

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.

0

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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