title: php - parsing string to date, making sure timezones are correct
body: <p>So I've got a text input that get's date &amp; time in this format:</p>
  
  <p><code>09/06/2010 21:08</code> (meaning September)</p>
  
  <p>I'm using <code>date_parse_from_format('m/d/Y H:i', $stringtoparse);</code> (someone tell me if I'm incorrect here)</p>
  
  <p>That function returns an associative array with indexes like "year" or "day" or "hour".</p>
  
  <p>The original text that was sent in needs to be treated as though it were in a certain timezone. It'll always be EST, but I'm just having troubles figuring out how to adjust for the timezone anyway.</p>
  
  <p>Basically, in the end, there will be two datetimes in the database (a start time and an end time). I need to know if the current time is in between those two times. I know once I have a final timestamp I can just use:</p>
  
  <p><code>$startdate &lt; now() &lt; $enddate</code> or something like such (of course now needs to be in the format of "EST", but I need to be sure timezones are correct first. How do I do this?</p>