title: Dealing with dates and timezones, with Zend_Date
body: <p>I have an application which uses Zend_Date to display dates. Zend_Date instances are created using datetime data from MySQL, user input and the current date.</p>
  
  <p>I would like for my users to be able to specify their timezone and for all dates to be displayed in their local time.</p>
  
  <p>At the moment my code works like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$date = '2009-01-01 10:30:00';
  
  $date = new Zend_Date($date, Zend_Date::ISO_8601);
  
  echo $date-&gt;get(Zend_Date::TIME_MEDIUM); //10:30:00
  
  $date-&gt;setTimezone('Australia/ACT');
  
  echo $date-&gt;get(Zend_Date::TIME_MEDIUM); //21:30:00
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This works, but requires a setTimezone call on every date. Is there an easier way to manage timezones?</p>
  
  <p>I've also been looking at using SET time_zone with MySQL, to return adjusted data from MySQL. Then I would only need to adjust dates created within PHP scripts for timezones. </p>
  
  <p>I'd love to hear the best way to handle this, if someone has experience.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>