PHP date - String to Timestamp - php

Question

I am trying to parse date strings without having to manipulate strings and expect a given format.
I want my user to be able to enter January 2, 2011 or 1-2-11, and still end up with 2011-01-02 12:00:00 to save in a database.
Currently, I have this in place:
$post_date = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime(stripslashes($_POST['post_date'])));
But it seems strtotime is returning 0, because the datetime ends up as 1969-12-31 17:00:00
What do I need to change?
UPDATE
From php.net:
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
strtotime — Parse about any English textual datetime description into a Unix timestamp.
..I guess not!
I am not trying to strtotime( an array:
if(isset($_POST['post_date'])){
foreach($_POST['post_date'] as $id => $post_date){
print $post_date.'<br />';
if(strlen(trim($post_date)) && $post_date !== 'Date posted'){
$update_data[$id]['post_date'] = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime(stripslashes($post_date)));
}
}
}
Got it working with:
if(isset($_POST['post_date'])){
foreach($_POST['post_date'] as $id => $post_date){
print $post_date.'<br />';
if(strlen(trim($post_date)) && $post_date !== 'Date posted'){
$post_date = str_replace(',', '', $post_date);
$post_date = str_replace('-', '/', $post_date);
$update_data[$id]['post_date'] = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime(stripslashes($post_date)));
}
}
}
Thanks to multiple contributors. I remove commas and replace hyphens with forward slashes.

Answer 1

From the comments the OP said :
$_POST['post_date'] is actually an array (updating multiple records),
but an example value would be 'December 31, 2012'
You cannot pass a comma in the strtotime arguments alongside time, doing so would always return a 1970-01-01 00:00:00. You have to remove the user generated comma.
$post_date = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime(stripslashes("1 January 1927 17:59")));
echo $post_date; //1927-01-01 17:59:00

Answer 2

You really need to be concerned with your input, but here's an idea.
foreach($_POST['input'] as $userDate) {
// strtotime() will assume m/d/y or y-m-d depending on if '-' of '/' is used.
$userDate = str_replace('-', '/', $userDate);
$post_date = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime(stripslashes($userDate)));
}

Answer 3

In PHP 5.3.3+ (and perhaps older versions)
date('Y-m-d', strtotime('January 2, 2011'))
(notice the comma IS there) will give you 2011-01-02
However, when you add hour and minute to the end of that date phrase, strtotime DOES return 0.
date('Y-m-d', strtotime('January 2, 2011 14:30'))
Unfortunately gives you 1970-01-01 00:00:00
Notice: http://codepad.org/qgJIJSaw
Consider removing the comma:
$date = str_replace(',', '', $date);
Also, strtotime will convert '1-2-11' to 2001-02-11 (February 11th 2001), so you will probably need to rearrange the numbers if they fit the pattern, using something like:
$date = preg_replace('#^([\d]{1,2})-([\d]{1,2})-([\d]{2,4})$#', '$3-$1-$2', $date);