How to set timeoffset for a specific date with JDdate

Question

I tried to apply timezone offset to a variable. Here is my code

$time_offset = "Australia/Sydney";
$start_time = "2015-07-31 15:03:00";

$date_end = JDate::getInstance('now', $time_offset);
$date_start = JDate::getInstance($start_time, $time_offset);

echo $date_end;
echo $date_start;

$date_end is returned a correct value but $date_start returned the original value (didn't change).

Is there anything I missed here? Thanks

Answer 1

I fixed it by creating JDate object

$time_offset = "Australia/Sydney";
$start_time = "2015-07-31 15:03:00";

$date_end = JDate::getInstance('now', $time_offset);
$date_start = new JDate($start_time);
$date_start->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone($time_offset));

echo $date_end;
echo $date_start;