500 error when using sqlsrv_get_field on MSSQL smalldatetime - php

Question

I'm back again with more PHP problems, but this time with the DateTime class.
This is a section of my actual code:
//setup $dbc and $dbcOptions
function test($database, $databaseoptions, $termcode, $department)
{
$tsql = "SELECT StartDate, StopDate
FROM CourseRecords
WHERE TermCode = '" .$termcode. "' AND Department = '" .$department. "';";
$params = array();
$stmt = sqlsrv_query($database, $tsql, $params, $databaseoptions); //---Query ALL the things!!!
if( $stmt === false ) {
echo 'This page is broken<br />';
die( print_r( sqlsrv_errors(), true));
}
return $stmt;
}
$results = test($dbc, $dbcOptions, "142s", "CSC");
$rows = sqlsrv_num_rows($results);
echo "rows = " .$rows;
for ($i = 0; $i < $rows; $i++)
{
if(sqlsrv_fetch($results) !== false)
{
$startdate = date_format(sqlsrv_get_field($results, 0), "Y-m-d"); //line 72
$stopdate = date_format(sqlsrv_get_field($results, 1), "Y-m-d"); //line 73
}
}
I get the following errors in my php-errors.log file:
[13-Nov-2014 17:05:19 UTC] PHP Warning: date_create(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are required to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Chicago' for '-6.0/no DST' instead in E:\inetpub\wwwroot\directory\searchtest.php on line 72
[13-Nov-2014 17:05:19 UTC] PHP Warning: date_create(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are required to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Chicago' for '-6.0/no DST' instead in E:\inetpub\wwwroot\directory\searchtest.php on line 73
Creating $startdate and $stopdate as DateTime objects produces the same error when I do this:
$timezone = new DateTimeZone("America/Chicago");
$startdate = new DateTime("2012-12-12", $timezone);
$stopdate = new DateTime("2012-12-12", $timezone);
// get $results and find $rows and junk
$startdate = sqlsrv_get_field($results, 0);
$stopdate = sqlsrv_get_field($results, 1);
which by all means should work because you guys have helped me with previous problems.
So my question is: Why does this fail with a 500 error and what can I do to correct it?

Answer 1

Converting my comment into answer:
Try adding date_default_timezone_set('America/Chicago'); at the beginning of your script.