Best way of converting date string to timestamp? - php

It's been a long long day and it's getting close to 2am here.
I was wondering if someone could give me some guidance towards the best solution of converting this string to timestamp and then converting it date time so it can be inserted into a database.
I know there is ways like this:
$d = new DateTime('26-10-2018');
$timestamp = $d->getTimestamp(); // Unix timestamp
$formatted_date = $d->format('Y-m-d'); // 2018-26-10
But is there anything which accepts the hours and minutes aswell?
$datestring = "26-10-2018 09:30";

How about this date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('26-10-2018 09:30'));

Related

Converting Date Format for Calculations in PHP

I'm displaying a due date for tasks in an m/d/y format. I'm displaying the day the task was posted in a "Posted X $name(s) ago" (eg. "Posted 6 day(s) ago").
I'm working on giving the timestamps (posted and due date) different CSS classes, depending on how many days there are from TODAY until the due date. (So the "Posted X" timestamp is less relevant, I just wanted to give a better picture.)
So far, I have the following down:
$cdate = $this->data['due'];
$today = time();
$dovi = date('m/d/Y', $today);
$difference = $cdate - $dovi;
$upcoming= floor($difference/60/60/24);
$cdate is pulling the due date from the DB, in m/d/y format. $today is telling us what today is (using the UNIX timestamp). $dovi is converting time() in to the m/d/y format. $difference is telling us the difference between today and the due date. $upcoming, in theory, should take that difference and dumb it down into a simple number.
I think that for the calculation to work, I would need to convert $cdate in to a UNIX timestamp or somehow convert both $today and $cdate into some other matching format other than m/d/y.
Does anyone have suggestions on the best way to make this work? I already have some code to run the CSS changes, the only thing I'm stuck on is this conversion/calculation issue to determine how many days from NOW (time()) the due date is. Thanks!!
Maybe something like this? Assuming $this->data['due'] is in m/d/Y format.
$this->data['due'] = '7/28/2012';
$diff = strtotime($this->data['due']) - strtotime(date('m/d/Y'));
var_dump(date('d',$diff)); // 3
You can pass any valid parameter to php's date function to have it formatted however you would like.
Its long one, but works...
$datetime = new DateTime("2012-07-22 02:03:50"); // your date in datetime type
$curr_stamp = time();
$act_stamp = mktime($datetime->format('H'), $datetime->format('i'), $datetime->format('s'), $datetime->format('n'), $datetime->format('j'), $datetime->format('Y'));
$diff=$curr_stamp-$act_stamp;
$day_diff = floor($diff / 86400);
if($day_diff < 7)
echo $day_diff." days ago";
Rather elegant and right solution (and also viable after the end of UNIX epoch).
$today = new DateTime(); // creating `today` DateTime object
$expiry = DateTime::createFromFormat('m/d/Y', $this->data['due']) // creating DateTime object from already formatted date
$difference = $today->diff($expiry); // 1st variant to calculate difference between dates
$difference = date_diff($today, $expiry); // and 2nd variant
echo $difference->format('Interval (difference) is %R% days');
Remember that UNIX epoch (timestamp) will "end" "soon" and code based on timestamps possibly will face some problems (maybe we will find the solution in future to avoid this, but ...), it is better to use DateTime class, bec. even to calculate number of years for those who are born before 1970 year can become kinda problem if you don't remember the date 1970.01.01 and trying to do it using timestamps (it is widespread database practice BTW :) ).
Never do it (timestamps) for very old dates and look to the future and DateTime will SaveOurSouls.

What's the best way to convert a date and time into a timestamp using php?

I need to convert a date and time (GMT) into a timestamp with php. The following code shows what I'm currently using:
<?php
$date="2012-06-29 10:50";
$timestamp = strtotime($date);
echo $timestamp;
?>
However, when I test the timestamp in an online convertor (http://www.epochconverter.com), the resulting date is 29th June 2012, 8:50 GMT, or 2 hours previous. Is it possible that the strtotime() function isn't completely accurate and is just an estimate of the time? If so, are there better methods I could use for getting the exact time?
Thanks.
strtotime assumes that you are converting a string in your server's local time, so if the servers time zone is two hours out the result will be as wll.
The comments in the manual suggest a couple of solutions, you can append UTC to your date:
$timestamp = strtotime($date.' UTC');
Or you can change the default timezone for the script (this will apply to all other time functions!):
date_default_timezone_set('UTC');
$timestamp = strtotime($date);
As a final alternative, you could try date_create_from_format which allows you to specify what exactly the format your string is:
$datetime = date_create_from_format('Y-m-d H:i', $date, new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
$timestamp = date_format($datetime, 'U');
// Alternatively (thanks Herbert) - 5.3+ only
$timestamp = date_timestamp_get($datetime);

PHP Date from strtotime with current time

I have been looking online for this answer and have come up empty...I am extremely tired so I thought I would give this a go....
I have a variable that has a date from a textbox
$effectiveDate=$_REQUEST['effectiveDate'];
What I am trying to do is take this date and add the current time
date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime($effectiveDate))
When I echo this out I get 1969-12-31 19:00:00
Is this possible? Can someone point me in the right direction?
I found a solution to my problem....
$currentDate = date("Y-m-d");
$currentTime = date("H:i:s");
$currentDate = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime($currentDate . $currentTime));
echo $currentDate;
This takes a date from variable in one format and takes the date from another variable in another format and puts them together :)
Thanks everyone for their time.....
DateTime::createFromFormat
would also work but only if you have PHP 5.3 or higher...(I think)
The effectiveDate string is not in a format that strtotime recognizes, so strtotime returns false which is interpreted as 0 which causes the date to be displayed as January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00, minus your time zone offset.
The result you see is caused by the entered date not being in a format recognised by strtotime. The most likely case I can think of without knowing the format you used is that you used the US order of putting the month and day the wrong way around - this confuses strtotime, because if it accepts both then it can't distinguish February 3rd and March 2nd, so it has to reject US-formatted dates.
The most reliable format for strtotime is YYYY-MM-DD HH:ii:ss, as it is unambigous.
The date is just a timestamp, it is not object-oriented and i don't like it.
You can use the DateTime object.
The object-oriented best way is:
$effectiveDate=$_REQUEST['effectiveDate'];
// here you must pass the original format to pass your original string to a DateTimeObject
$dateTimeObject = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $effectiveDate);
// here you must pass the desired format
echo $dateTimeObject->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Remove time part of a timestamp

How can I remove time part of a timestamp?
So for example turn 1310571061 to 1310565600 which is the plain date timestamp.
strtotime(date("Y-m-d", 1310571061));
That should do it for you.
In case you wanted a mathematical solution:
$time=1310571061;
echo floor($time/86400)*86400;
There are 86,400 seconds in 24 hours (which is the length of a typical day, but not all... see DST). Since our timestamps are in UTC, this shouldn't be a problem. You can divide that by the number of seconds in a day, drop the remainder, and multiply back out.
Using a DateTime object can be helpful, and also can make the code more readable...
$dt = new DateTime();
$dt->setTimestamp(1310571061);
echo $dt->format('Y-m-d, H:i:s') . "\r\n";
$dt->setTime(0, 0, 0);
echo $dt->format('Y-m-d, H:i:s');
Result...
2011-07-14, 03:31:01
2011-07-14, 00:00:00
The choice of whether to use raw timestamps or DateTime objects will depend a lot on the implementation needs, but generally speaking DateTime objects will go a long way towards reducing confusion and errors that can crop up especially around Timezone issues and Daylight Saving Time issues.
Try:
<?php
$ts = '1310571061';
echo strtotime(date('Y-m-d 00:00:00', $ts));
?>
$pubdate='2003-02-19T00:00:00.000-05:00';
$da = strtotime($pubdate);
echo $dat = date('Y-m-d', $da);
The answer is like :"2003-02-19"
Thank You
You could do:
$date = strotime(date("y/m/d", $timestamp));
This is what I usually do:
your_timestamp = pd.to_datetime(your_timestamp.strftime(format="%x"))
The function strftime will convert your_timestamp to a string without the time component. Then the function pd.to_datetime will convert it back to a Timestamp without the time component.

Compare timestamp to date

I need to compare a timestamp to a date. I would just like to compare the date portion without the time bit. I need to check whether a timestamp occurs on the day before yesterday i.e. today - 2.
Could you show me a snippet please? Thank you.
I've been reading through the PHP docs but couldn't find a very clean way of doing this. What I found was converting the timestamp to a date with a particular format and comparing it to a date which I get by doing a time delta to get the date before yesterday and converting it to a particular format. Messy.
You can arcieve this by using the function strtotime.
To round to a day I personaly like to edit the timestamp. This is a notations of seconds since epoch. One day is 86400 seconds, so if you do the following caculation:
$time = $time - ( $time % 86400 );
You can convert it back to a date again with the date function of PHP, for example:
$readableFormat = date( 'd-m-Y', $time );
There is also much on the internet about this topic.
you can use the strtotime function
<?php
$time = strtotime("5 june 2010");
$before = strtotime("-1 day",$time);
$after = strtotime("+1 day",$time);

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