Adding time-zones based on state and country into MYSQL table - php

Question

I have a mysql table with data like (name, address, sex, city state, zip, country, timezone) When a user fills in the form to add this data, i would like the relevant time-zone to be added based on state and country, how can i do this?
Thanks,

Answer 1

Why not have the following select box in your form?
$list = DateTimeZone::listAbbreviations();
$idents = DateTimeZone::listIdentifiers();
$data = $offset = $added = array();
foreach ($list as $abbr => $info) {
foreach ($info as $zone) {
if ( ! empty($zone['timezone_id'])
AND
! in_array($zone['timezone_id'], $added)
AND
in_array($zone['timezone_id'], $idents)) {
$z = new DateTimeZone($zone['timezone_id']);
$c = new DateTime(null, $z);
$zone['time'] = $c->format('H:i a');
$data[] = $zone;
$offset[] = $z->getOffset($c);
$added[] = $zone['timezone_id'];
}
}
}
array_multisort($added, SORT_ASC, $data);
$options = array();
foreach ($data as $key => $row) {
$options[$row['timezone_id']] = $row['time'] . ' - '
. formatOffset($row['offset'])
. ' ' . $row['timezone_id'];
$values[$row['timezone_id']] = $row['time'] . '/'
. formatOffset($row['offset'])
. '/' . $row['timezone_id'];
}
function formatOffset($offset) {
$hours = $offset / 3600;
$remainder = $offset % 3600;
$sign = $hours > 0 ? '+' : '-';
$hour = (int) abs($hours);
$minutes = (int) abs($remainder / 60);
if ($hour == 0 AND $minutes == 0) {
$sign = ' ';
}
return 'GMT' . $sign . str_pad($hour, 2, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT)
.':'. str_pad($minutes,2, '0');
}
echo "<select name='locale'>";
foreach($options as $key=>$value){
echo "<option value='".$values[$key]."'>".$value."</option>";
}
echo "</select>";
This would handle the fact there are states with multiple timezones. When you then get the result of this form submission, you can explode the value of the field on '/', where $_POST['locale'] is the handler for the chosen select option, then you can extract timezone, country and state from a single field.
$locale=explode("/",$_POST['locale']);
// $locale[0] = timezone
// $locale[1] = country
// $locale[2-n] = state(s)