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Time

class Cake\View\Helper\TimeHelper(View $view, array $config = [])

The TimeHelper allows for the quick processing of time related information. The TimeHelper has two main tasks that it can perform:

  1. It can format time strings.

  2. It can test time.

Using the Helper

A common use of the TimeHelper is to offset the date and time to match a user’s time zone. Lets use a forum as an example. Your forum has many users who may post messages at any time from any part of the world. A way to manage the time is to save all dates and times as GMT+0 or UTC. Uncomment the line date_default_timezone_set('UTC'); in config/bootstrap.php to ensure your application’s time zone is set to GMT+0.

Next add a time zone field to your users table and make the necessary modifications to allow your users to set their time zone. Now that we know the time zone of the logged in user we can correct the date and time on our posts using the TimeHelper:

echo $this->Time->format(
  $post->created,
  \IntlDateFormatter::FULL,
  null,
  $user->time_zone
);
// Will display 'Saturday, August 22, 2011 at 11:53:00 PM GMT'
// for a user in GMT+0. While displaying,
// 'Saturday, August 22, 2011 at 03:53 PM GMT-8:00'
// for a user in GMT-8

Most of TimeHelper’s features are intended as backwards compatible interfaces for applications that are upgrading from older versions of CakePHP. Because the ORM returns Cake\I18n\Time instances for every timestamp and datetime column, you can use the methods there to do most tasks. For example, to read about the accepted formatting strings take a look at the Cake\I18n\Time::i18nFormat() method.