javascript displaying a different date than php

Question

I have a php script that generates a date object from a database value like this:

$dt = new DateTime($string_from_database);   // In YYYY-mm-dd format
$jsonValue = $dt->format('U');

This is retrieved by my JS using AJAX. I feed it into a jQuery table like this:

            //DateStart
        {
            'sName': 'date_start',
            'iDataSort': 2,
            'bSearchable': false,
            'fnRender': function(obj) {
                var dStart = new Date(parseInt(obj.aData['DateStartJson']) * 1000);
                var dEnd = new Date(parseInt(obj.aData['DateEndJson']) * 1000);
                if (obj.aData['DateStartJson'] == obj.aData['DateEndJson'])
                    return dStart.toDateString().substr(4);
                else
                    return dStart.toDateString().substr(4) + ' -<br/>' + dEnd.toDateString().substr(4);
            }
        },

Some users are reporting that the JS time displayed is a day earlier than the date as displayed via PHP directly.

PHP displays: Aug 24, 2013 JS displays: Aug 23, 2013

Note: This happens only with some users, and I cannot reproduce it locally.

Any ideas? Jared

John Green · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-07 23:24:08Z

5

The javascript is using local machine clock, while the server is spitting out server time. Unless all of your users are in the same time zone as the server, you'll run into this issue. A solution used by many is to normalize server time to something like UTC, then make appropriate calculations on the client side javascript to account for the delta.

answered Aug 7, 2013 at 23:24

John Green

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3 Comments

Stephen Over a year ago

momentjs.com/timezone and github.com/mde/timezone-js are two actively maintained timezone libraries. [since you beat me to answering]

Jared Over a year ago

Thank you! Appreciate the help. Here is the function I wrote that seems to be working so far. Hard to tell since I am having difficulty reproducing the issue locally, but it is working for Mountain Time!

Jared Over a year ago

dateFromUnixTime : function(unixTime) {     var unixTimeMs = parseInt(unixTime) * 1000;     var dte = new Date(unixTimeMs);     var tzo = dte.getTimezoneOffset();		// offset between user tz and utc     var easternOffset = 600;				// offset for east coast (server) tz     var diff = (tzo - easternOffset) * 60000;		// diff between the two in milliseconds     return new Date(unixTimeMs - diff); },

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