strtotime returning false

Question

I have datestrings that looks like this:

"2012 28 Nov 21:00 CET"

strtotime("2012 28 Nov 21:00 CET") return false.

Is there any way to convert this string in to a date object, or do I need to format it differently?

Answer 1

2012 28 Nov 21:00 CET is weird date/time format. Y-D-M? Where are you getting that?

At any rate, the DateTime object has a method createFromFormat that will do a better job parsing that:

$dt = DateTime::createFromFormat("Y d M H:i T", '2012 28 Nov 21:00 CET');
$ts = $dt->getTimestamp();
echo $ts; // 1354132800 

Try it here: http://codepad.viper-7.com/NfAmcw

strtotime expects a "English textual datetime" (according to the manual), which Y-D-M is not. Any time strtotime returns false, it simply doesn't understand your string, which in this application is expected. A note on the manual page deals with this issue:

Note:

Dates in the m/d/y or d-m-y formats are disambiguated by looking at the separator between the various components: if the separator is a slash (/), then the American m/d/y is assumed; whereas if the separator is a dash (-) or a dot (.), then the European d-m-y format is assumed.

To avoid potential ambiguity, it's best to use ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) dates or DateTime::createFromFormat() when possible.

That's just as well, DateTime is a superior tool for any interaction with dates or times.

Documentation

• DateTime class- http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php
• DateTime::createFromFormat - http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.createfromformat.php
• strtotime - http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php
• date (also lists date format strings) - http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

Answer 2

strtotime doesn't create a date object, it simply tries to parse your input and returns a unix timestamp.

You can find valid formats here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.formats.php

echo strtotime("2012-11-28T21:00:00+01:00");

would output 1354132800

to create a php DateTime object you could do this:

$date = new DateTime('2012-11-28T21:00:00+01:00');
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');