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TimeHelper

The Time Helper does what it says on the tin: saves you time. It allows for the quick processing of time related information. The Time Helper has two main tasks that it can perform:

  1. It can format time strings.
  2. It can test time (but cannot bend time, sorry).

2.1 TimeHelper have been refactored into :phpCakeTime class to allow easier use outside of the View layer. Within a view, these methods are accessible via the TimeHelper class and you can called it as you would call a normal helper method: $this->Time->method($args);.

Using the Helper

A common use of the Time Helper 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. An easy 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 app/Config/core.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 Time Helper:

echo $this->Time->format('F jS, Y h:i A', $post['Post']['created'], null, $user['User']['time_zone']);
// Will display August 22nd, 2011 11:53 PM for a user in GMT+0
// August 22nd, 2011 03:53 PM for a user in GMT-8
// and August 23rd, 2011 09:53 AM GMT+10

Most of the Time Helper methods have a $timezone parameter. The $timezone parameter accepts a valid timezone identifier string or an instance of DateTimeZone class.