strtotime with datetimepicker - php

Question

I'm using the datetimepicker jquery plugin and have the following code to display it:
var dateToday = new Date();
$('#post_date_picker').datetimepicker({
minDate: dateToday,
timeFormat: 'hh:mm p z',
timezoneList: [
{ value: -300, label: 'Eastern'},
{ value: -360, label: 'Central' },
{ value: -420, label: 'Mountain' },
{ value: -480, label: 'Pacific' }
]
});
Since I'm displaying it in 12 hour format instead of 24 and using the min date if the server time is already PM I can select the time and it outputs it like 05/27/2015 08:50 p -0500
I then do the following code to get the date ready to be inserted into the database:
$date_time = strtotime($_POST['post_date']);
$post_date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $date_time);
The problem is strtotime isn't recongining the p for PM and is inserting the date basically 12 hours previously. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Set timeFormat: 'hh:mm tt z'.
And in php use date_create & date_format ( $date_time,'Y-m-d h:i:sA')
See the difference between( strtotime / date_create ).
// method using date_create
//$date=$_POST['post_date'];
$date='05/27/2015 08:50 p -0500';
$date_time=date_create($date);
$post_date=date_format($date_time,'Y-m-d H:i:s');
echo $post_date."<br>";//outputs 2015-05-27 08:50:00
//method using strtotime
$date_time = strtotime($date);
$post_date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $date_time);
echo $post_date;//outputs 2015-05-27 13:50:00
strtotime can take many string parameters, may be when you pass the date as '05/27/2015 08:50 p -0500' some conflict is occurring resulting in wrong interpretation of time.