Difference between offset and offset_user

Question

I've been struggling to get the correct date and time in a module.

I set global config to London (i.e. GMT which is currently 1 hour ahead of UTC)

I set the date in my component to

2020-05-10 12:50:00 (calendar select box)

and this seems to work. It's stored as

2020-05-10 11:50:00 in the database - so the timezone is being correctly accounted for.

I then go to retrieve it in my module adjusting for the time zone

        $config = JFactory::getConfig();
        $debug = $config->get('offset');
        $myDateString = $itemStartDate; //the date stored in the db 2020-05-10 11:50:00

        $date = new JDate($myDateString);
        $date->setTimezone($debug);

        echo "database date is ".$itemStartDate." and calculated date is ".$date->format(JText::_('DATE_FORMAT_FILTER_DATETIME'));

The date shown by the echo statement is just the date from the database - it doesn't account for the 1 hour time difference.

Am I doing something wrong?

I looked in config and there is offset and offset_user - offset is set to Europe/London and offset_user to UTC (although when I manually change it to Europe/London is makes no difference)

thanks

Answer 1

Answer in the update. Just needed the correct joomla code!

Okay seemed to have worked it out.

        $todayDate = JFactory::getDate('now', $timezoneis);
        $date = JFactory::getDate($itemStartDate, $timezoneis);
        $date2 = JHtml::date($itemStartDate , 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $timezoneis);
        echo "<br>database date is ".$itemStartDate;

        echo " <br>Timezoned date is ".$date." timezone: ".$timezoneis;
        echo " <br>Corrected timezoned date2 is ".$date2." timezone: ".$timezoneis;
        echo "<br>todays date is ".$todayDate;

$date2 variable gives the corrected time regardless of time zone. I also corrected $todays date so that it gives todays date correctly.

This is really badly documented in Joomla so I hope this helps someone struggling to figure it out.