PHP DateTime failing to convert Amazon shipping date - php

Question

I've realised my DateTime function is not converting and returning false.
Example date/time as provided by Amazon. This is what I am trying to convert from:
2020-07-28T23:00:00Z
Function which accepts the date as provided by Amazon and tries to convert it.
protected function dateUtcToEuropeLondon($date)
{
try {
$dt = new DateTime($date, new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
$dt->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('Europe/London'));
return $dt;
} catch (Exception $e) {
return false;
}
}
Full function.
// Detect if custom shipping date exists
$date = (isset($order_details->EarliestShipDate)) ? $order_details->EarliestShipDate : '';
// Set custom meta field so we can easily access it via WC_Order
if (!empty($date)) {
$date = $this->dateUtcToEuropeLondon(strtotime($date));
if ($date instanceof DateTime) {
update_post_meta($order_id, '_wpl_shipping_date', $date->format('Y-m-d\TH:i:s'));
}
}
For starters, I checked what value I got back from:
$date = $this->dateUtcToEuropeLondon(strtotime('2020-07-28T23:00:00Z'));
it was nothing: ''.

Answer 1

The problem is that you're trying to create a DateTime object using a UNIX timestamp (via strtotime) which is all numbers. What DateTime is expecting is the more 'human friendly' d/m/y style format - so you'll need to specify that what you're giving it is a 'unixtime' string, rather than a 'datetime' string -- subtle difference.
Try changing
$dt = new DateTime($date, new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
to
$dt = new DateTime('#'.$date, new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
Using an # at the start of the string will tell your DateTime object that you're sending in a unix timestamp. Once it's happy, it will then allow your function to determine the correct timezone from UTC to Europe/London (GMT/BST).