Time to Change

Dennis found this little nugget in an application he inherited.

function myTime(){
    $utc_str = gmdate("M d Y H:i:s", time());
    $utc = strtotime($utc_str);
    return $utc;
}

time() returns the current time as a Unix timestamp. gmdate then formats that, with the assumption that the time is in GMT. strtotime then parses that string back into a timestamp, and returns that timestamp.

Notably, PHP pins the Unix timestamp to UTC+00:00, aka GMT. So this function takes a time, formats it, parses the format to get what should be the same time back.

And we call the function myTime because of course we do. When reinventing a wheel, but square, please do let everyone know that it’s yours.