How do I get timestamp from e.g. 22-09-2008
?
If you're looking to convert a UTC datetime (2016-02-14T12:24:48.321Z
) to timestamp, here's how you'd do it:
function UTCToTimestamp($utc_datetime_str)
{
preg_match_all('/(.+?)T(.+?)\.(.*?)Z/i', $utc_datetime_str, $matches_arr);
$datetime_str = $matches_arr[1][0]." ".$matches_arr[2][0];
return strtotime($datetime_str);
}
$my_utc_datetime_str = '2016-02-14T12:24:48.321Z';
$my_timestamp_str = UTCToTimestamp($my_utc_datetime_str);
Using strtotime() function you can easily convert date to timestamp
<?php
// set default timezone
date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');
//define date and time
$date = date("d M Y H:i:s");
// output
echo strtotime($date);
?>
More info: http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php
Online conversion tool: http://freeonlinetools24.com/
Using mktime:
list($day, $month, $year) = explode('-', '22-09-2008');
echo mktime(0, 0, 0, $month, $day, $year);
function date_to_stamp( $date, $slash_time = true, $timezone = 'Europe/London', $expression = "#^\d{2}([^\d]*)\d{2}([^\d]*)\d{4}$#is" ) {
$return = false;
$_timezone = date_default_timezone_get();
date_default_timezone_set( $timezone );
if( preg_match( $expression, $date, $matches ) )
$return = date( "Y-m-d " . ( $slash_time ? '00:00:00' : "h:i:s" ), strtotime( str_replace( array($matches[1], $matches[2]), '-', $date ) . ' ' . date("h:i:s") ) );
date_default_timezone_set( $_timezone );
return $return;
}
// expression may need changing in relation to timezone
echo date_to_stamp('19/03/1986', false) . '<br />';
echo date_to_stamp('19**03**1986', false) . '<br />';
echo date_to_stamp('19.03.1986') . '<br />';
echo date_to_stamp('19.03.1986', false, 'Asia/Aden') . '<br />';
echo date('Y-m-d h:i:s') . '<br />';
//1986-03-19 02:37:30
//1986-03-19 02:37:30
//1986-03-19 00:00:00
//1986-03-19 05:37:30
//2012-02-12 02:37:30
Be careful with functions like strtotime()
that try to "guess" what you mean (it doesn't guess of course, the rules are here).
Indeed 22-09-2008
will be parsed as 22 September 2008, as it is the only reasonable thing.
How will 08-09-2008
be parsed? Probably 09 August 2008.
What about 2008-09-50
? Some versions of PHP parse this as 20 October 2008.
So, if you are sure your input is in DD-MM-YYYY
format, it's better to use the solution offered by @Armin Ronacher.
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.