In PHP, how do you get the text offset of a timezone - php

Question

How do you get the timezone offset text? For example if I pass in:
America/New_York
...I would like to receive back:
-04:00

Answer 1

I created a function called getTimezoneOffsetText
<?php
function getTimezoneOffsetText($timezone){
date_default_timezone_set( "UTC" );
$daylight_savings_offset_in_seconds = timezone_offset_get(timezone_open($timezone), new DateTime());
$mod = $daylight_savings_offset_in_seconds/60 % 60;
$min = abs($mod);
return sprintf('%+03d', $daylight_savings_offset_in_seconds/60/60) . ':' . sprintf('%02d', $min);
}
$offset1 = 'America/New_York';
$offset2 = 'Asia/Kabul';
$offset3 = 'Asia/Kathmandu';
$offset4 = 'Israel';
$offset5 = 'Greenwich';
$offset6 = 'America/Caracas';
echo '<pre>';
echo $offset1 . ":\t" . getTimezoneOffsetText($offset1) . '<br/>';
echo $offset2 . ":\t\t" . getTimezoneOffsetText($offset2) . '<br/>';
echo $offset3 . ":\t\t" . getTimezoneOffsetText($offset3) . '<br/>';
echo $offset4 . ":\t\t\t" . getTimezoneOffsetText($offset4) . '<br/>';
echo $offset5 . ":\t\t" . getTimezoneOffsetText($offset5) . '<br/>';
echo $offset6 . ":\t" . getTimezoneOffsetText($offset6) . '<br/>';
echo '</pre>';
It generates this data:
America/Caracas: -04:30
Asia/Kabul: +04:30
Asia/Kathmandu: +05:45
Israel: +03:00
Greenwich: +00:00
America/New_York: -04:00
Note that it gets half hour and other "non-standard" timezones such as Caracas, Kabul and Kathmandu. I'm curious though if there is already a function that exists that accomplishes this.