How to convert date to timestamp in PHP?

Question

How do I get timestamp from e.g. 22-09-2008?

Answer 1

This method works on both Windows and Unix and is time-zone aware, which is probably what you want if you work with dates.

If you don't care about timezone, or want to use the time zone your server uses:

$d = DateTime::createFromFormat('d-m-Y H:i:s', '22-09-2008 00:00:00'); if ($d === false) {     die("Incorrect date string"); } else {     echo $d->getTimestamp(); } 

1222093324 _{(This will differ depending on your server time zone...)}

If you want to specify in which time zone, here EST. (Same as New York.)

$d = DateTime::createFromFormat(     'd-m-Y H:i:s',     '22-09-2008 00:00:00',     new DateTimeZone('EST') );  if ($d === false) {     die("Incorrect date string"); } else {     echo $d->getTimestamp(); } 

1222093305

Or if you want to use UTC. (Same as "GMT".)

$d = DateTime::createFromFormat(     'd-m-Y H:i:s',     '22-09-2008 00:00:00',     new DateTimeZone('UTC') );  if ($d === false) {     die("Incorrect date string"); } else {     echo $d->getTimestamp(); } 

1222093289

Regardless, it's always a good starting point to be strict when parsing strings into structured data. It can save awkward debugging in the future. Therefore I recommend to always specify date format.