PHP converting unknown datetime string to datetime object - php

Question

I am having trouble with the following string which is supposed to be a datetime (response from an api).
2013-03-08T19:11:11.234+0000
I need to convert the string to ISO 8601.
The exact format should look like:
2016-03-01T12:00:00+00:00
If someone could help me do this in php would be great but I would be already more than happy if someone could identify the format (like yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss).

Answer 1

It seems the API returns the time with milliseconds.
Try this:
$date = '2013-03-08T19:11:11.234+0000';
$format = 'Y-m-d\TH:i:s.uO';
$dt = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, $date);
echo $dt->format(DateTime::ISO8601);
Result:
2013-03-08T19:11:11+0000
EDIT
Based on comments on your answer, you need to convert such a time:
2016-03-01T11:01:51.126044 00:00
Since it's not possible to parse this format with DateTime, you need to make it readable first.
There are many ways to do this. What we need is to add a + before timezone, so that my code above work.
If you are sure the date you get from the API is always this format, and that there will always be only 1 space in the string, just replace the string with a space:
$date = '2016-03-01T11:01:51.126044 00:00';
str_replace(' ', '+', $date);
$format = 'Y-m-d\TH:i:s.uP';
$dt = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, $date);
echo $dt->format(DateTime::ISO8601);
This should work (note that here the timezone mask is P since there is a colon)
You can also use preg_replace() instead of DateTime, if you don't need the date for calculations:
$date = '2016-03-01T11:01:51.126044 00:00';
$date = preg_replace('`(\.[0-9]+\s)`', '+', $date);
echo $date;
This produces:
2016-03-01T11:01:51+00:00
If you need the date for calculation, just convert it to DateTime after:
$date = '2016-03-01T11:01:51.126044 00:00';
$date = preg_replace('`(\.[0-9]+\s)`', '+', $date);
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat(DateTime::ISO8601, $date);
var_dump($date);
This produces:
object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
["date"]=>
string(26) "2016-03-01 11:01:51.000000"
["timezone_type"]=>
int(1)
["timezone"]=>
string(6) "+00:00"
}

Answer 2

I suggest you to use Carbon: http://carbon.nesbot.com/docs/
echo Carbon::parse('2013-03-08T19:11:11.234+0000')->toAtomString();
Also, the format you want is ATOM, not ISO 8601. You could do #Arcesilas way, it should work too.