Convert String To date in PHP

Question

How can I convert this string 05/Feb/2010:14:00:01 to unixtime ?

Answer 1

Use the strtotime function:

Example:

 $date = "25 december 2009";
 $my_date = date('m/d/y', strtotime($date));
 echo $my_date;

Answer 2

For PHP 5.3 this should work. You may need to fiddle with passing $dateInfo['is_dst'], wasn't working for me anyhow.

$date = '05/Feb/2010:14:00:01';
$dateInfo = date_parse_from_format('d/M/Y:H:i:s', $date);
$unixTimestamp = mktime(
    $dateInfo['hour'], $dateInfo['minute'], $dateInfo['second'],
    $dateInfo['month'], $dateInfo['day'], $dateInfo['year'],
    $dateInfo['is_dst']
);

Versions prior, this should work.

$date = '05/Feb/2010:14:00:01';
$format = '@^(?P<day>\d{2})/(?P<month>[A-Z][a-z]{2})/(?P<year>\d{4}):(?P<hour>\d{2}):(?P<minute>\d{2}):(?P<second>\d{2})$@';
preg_match($format, $date, $dateInfo);
$unixTimestamp = mktime(
    $dateInfo['hour'], $dateInfo['minute'], $dateInfo['second'],
    date('n', strtotime($dateInfo['month'])), $dateInfo['day'], $dateInfo['year'],
    date('I')
);

You may not like regular expressions. You could annotate it, of course, but not everyone likes that either. So, this is an alternative.

$day = $date[0].$date[1];
$month = date('n', strtotime($date[3].$date[4].$date[5]));
$year = $date[7].$date[8].$date[9].$date[10];
$hour = $date[12].$date[13];
$minute = $date[15].$date[16];
$second = $date[18].$date[19];

Or substr, or explode, whatever you wish to parse that string.