CDbExpression('NOW()') and timezones

Yii 1.1 General Discussion
1

Does CDbExpression(‘NOW()’) handle timezones? I’m currently setting my timezone in my application to


date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');

Then I’m storing some dates in the database with CDbExpression(‘NOW()’) however when I look in the database the time set is to the server time which is in the pacific time zone. How do I get the timestamp to be in the proper eastern timezone?

Thanks in advance!

2

Since NOW() is evaluated in the Database, this is an issue of DB configuration. You should check the MySQL docs, on how to configure the server timezone there.

3

What I do, since I don’t have any control over my mysql server, is setting the timezone to UTC and use time() instead of NOW() when saving time/dates. ;)


Yii::app()->setTimeZone("UTC");

and for timestamps:


date("Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z", time());
4

Thank you both. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to use time() instead, but it makes sense if CDbExpression(‘NOW()’) is a MySQL setting and I need to have control over timezones being displayed on the front end.