What are the potential pitfalls of relying solely on UTC time in PHP applications?

Relying solely on UTC time in PHP applications can lead to issues when dealing with time zone conversions or displaying local times to users. To avoid potential pitfalls, it is recommended to store all timestamps in UTC and convert them to the user's local time when displaying. 

// Store timestamps in UTC
$timestamp = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s');

// Convert UTC timestamp to user's local time
$user_timezone = new DateTimeZone('America/New_York');
$datetime = new DateTime($timestamp, new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
$datetime->setTimezone($user_timezone);
echo $datetime->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Keywords

UTC time PHP applications timezones date functions daylight saving time

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