current_time()

  • I’m trying to write a small plugin to display messages on my site depending on the day. (My site is updated on a very strict schedule, and I want to display when the next post will appear)

    Anyway, I’m using current_time('timestamp') to try and get the blog’s time as set in the options (as opposed to GMT or the server’s time).

    Unfortunately, it seems to be returning something very odd—neither the server’s time, nor GMT. Perhaps it’s the server’s time minus the GMT offset in the options page. Either way, it’s way off.

    Am I doing something wrong? If there an easy way to get the time that’s configured in the WordPress options page?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • current_time('timestamp') returns the time as a UNIX timestamp (that is, in seconds starting from 01/01/1970).

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.ads-software.com Admin

    Getting the timestamp like that is useful if you want to actually compare it to some other timestamp (which you can generate from a string date/time by using the strtotime() function, or using one of the other PHP date/time functions).

    If you want to display the time as a text string, then you should use current_time(‘mysql’) instead.

    As for what it returns, current_time will be the server time + the offset in the options page, and it will be equivalent to the time displayed on the options page itself.

    Thread Starter marky

    (@marky)

    Sorry, I should have clarified; I’m feeding current_time('timestamp') into the PHP date function to get the date. Specifically, for debug purposes, I’m echoing date('l dS F Y h:i:s A', current_time('timestamp')).

    It continues to return something extremely odd. As of 2006-11-07 14:00:00 GMT, for example, it was returning 2006-11-06 21:00:00. My GMT offset is -5 (i.e. EST). The server is on the west coast, but that still shouldn’t explain the wild difference I’m seeing.

    Perhaps I should be adding the offset manually? I’m using Dreamhost, so I’d be very surprised if this is a server misconfiguration.

    Thread Starter marky

    (@marky)

    My apologies; I think I understand why I’m getting the wild difference. I had set my GMT offset to -11 by accident (while debugging around), and since the server is on the west coast, it was returning the time as PST – 11.

    Now, that’s still not exactly what I’m looking for. I’m looking for GMT + offset. Is there a WP function that will give me that, or do I have to add gmt_offset() to the UTC time manually?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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