How to handle the timezone received via the API on reports

[Dorine]

Hi!

I need to convert in UTC (using php) the dates and hours received from a report but I’m not sure how to manage the received "Adwords-timezones".

 

I see two ways to handle them :

 

First way:

We receive : "(GMT +02:00) Paris" : I always remove 2 hours and I don’t take into account the DST of Paris?

 

Second way :

We receive : "(GMT +02:00) Paris" : I affect this to the timezone : ‘Europe/Paris’ and so the DST of Paris is taken into account.

 

Can you please tell me which one of these two solutions I should use ?

Or is there a third way that we are not aware of ?

 

Thanks a lot in advance for your help on this.

Best,

Dorine

[Shwetha Vastrad (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dorine,

The timezone returned in AdWords Reports uses standard timezones. You should use the second approach so the daylight savings for Paris is taken into account. 

Regards,

Shwetha, AdWords API Team.

[Dorine]

Hi Shwetha,

Thanks a lot for your answer!

So we will use the second approach. It comes then to another question.

We receive sometimes the following timezone: '(GMT-05:00) Eastern Time'

How should we understand it?

1- Is it the real official "Eastern Standard Time" all over the year.

2- Or does it take into account the daylight saving in anyway? and if yes how?

(We can then use this principle for the other similar received timezones: Central Time, Pacific Time, Mountain Time, Atlantic Time.)

Thanks a lot in advance for your help on this,

Dorine

[Shwetha Vastrad (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dorine,

If you get a timezone as '(GMT-05:00) Eastern Time', it does not consider daylight savings into account. To get the Daylight Savings time, you will need to adjust the offset. 

[Dorine]

Thank you so much Shwetha!

Sorry, but we have still a difficult exception. 

We received this timezone:  

"(GMT+00:00) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin"

Which time is it?

GMT or Dublin.

(Dublin is GMT in the winter times and IST in the summer times.)

I hope it's the last element to bother you with.

Thanks a lot in advance for your help on this,

Best,

Dorine

[Shwetha Vastrad (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dorine,

I believe this represents GMT. This would give you the time without Daylight savings taken into account.