PHP & system dates are different

There seems to be no easy (system independent) way of getting system date/time in PHP, but this seems to work:

    $timezone = 'UTC';
    if (strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3)) === 'WIN') {
         $timezone = exec('tzutil /g');
    } else {
            $timezone = exec('date +%Z');
    }

    $localTimezone = new DateTimeZone($timezone);
    $myDateTime = new DateTime(date(), $localTimezone);
    echo ($myDateTime->format('D M j G:i:s T Y') );

I haven't tested on Windows but on Linux it works.

Ideally, you should configure each server's php.ini where date.timezone can be set:

; ...

[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone = 'America/Chicago'

; ...

A list of acceptable timezones can be found in the PHP manual.

If you'd rather set it on each script here's a platform independent function that sets it:

<?php
function setTimezone($OSXPassword = null){

    $timezone = null;
    switch(true){
        //Linux (Tested on Ubuntu 14.04)
        case(file_exists('/etc/timezone')):
            $timezone = file_get_contents('/etc/timezone');
            $timezone = trim($timezone); //Remove an extra newline char.
            break;

        //Windows (Untested) (Thanks @Mugoma J. Okomba!)
        case(strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3)) === 'WIN'):
            $timezone = exec('tzutil /g');
            break;

        //OSX (Tested on OSX 10.11 - El Capitan)
        case(file_exists('/usr/sbin/systemsetup')):
            if(!isset($OSXPassword)){
                $OSXPassword = readline('**WARNING your input will appear on screen!**  Password for sudo: ');
            }
            $timezone = exec("echo '" . $OSXPassword ."' | sudo -S systemsetup -gettimezone");
            $timezone = substr($timezone, 11);
            break;
    }

    if(empty($timezone)){
        trigger_error('setTimezone could not determine your timezone', E_USER_ERROR);
    } else {
        date_default_timezone_set($timezone);
    }

    return $timezone;
}

setTimezone();
?>

As you can tell, support for OSX is sketchy.

The only decent way of getting a timezone on OSX is through systemsetup which requires super user to run. I really hate the practice of storing root's password in a PHP script but I've included the option for completeness - use with caution, this is a security vulnerability. On OSX, if root's password is not provided the script will attempt to get it from user input.

I just used the raw system date. Seemed like the obvious solution. Here's how I did it:

//*** OVERRIDE PHP DATE WITH RAW SYSTEM DATE ****
$sysdate = exec('date +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S');
$sysdate = str_replace("_"," ",$sysdate);
$sd = strtotime($sysdate);

$MM = date ("m", $sd);
$DD = date ("d", $sd);
$YY = date ("Y", $sd);
$HH = date ("H", $sd);
$MN = date ("i", $sd);
$SS = date ("s", $sd);

Try this input at the top of your file.

date_default_timezone_set('Country');

Example:
date_default_timezone_set('Hongkong');