time() to DateTime - php

Question

I have an application that uses time() to record the time a topic was posted. I have done this for a long time and the only glitch i ever had with the method was that the time was always off by an hour (mainly a DST issue i never looked into).
I'm want to switch to the DateTime method, since I'm also switching to Twig, which uses that date format when setting a timezone.
But from what I can see, you can't use timestamps to parse the date. my question is, how do you input a date and parse it and what format are they looking for if it isn't time()?

Answer 1

By the sounds of it your server's default timezone is UTC. I suggest you try changing the default_timezone setting in php.ini to something that applies DST. This will mean that when you use date(), the resulting output will be correctly adjusted for DST.

Answer 2

you can't use timestamps to parse the date
There is a way, if your php version is >=5.3 :
$time = time();//or other time
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('U',$time);
but as a matter of fact it is somewhat weird to use timestamp as DateTime does not rely on it. You can parse a date string directly with the datetime constructor if your date is english or "french" (i.e d/m/y). You can also create your custom format.
how do you input a date and parse it and what format are they looking for if it isn't time()
if it is a a standard format date :
$date = new DateTime($yourString);//would throw an exception if the format is wrong
if it is a custom format, like DD/MM/YYYY 14h32mins
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('d/m/Y h\hi\m\i\n\s',$yourString);
if($date === false){//if format does not fit
exit('Your wrong !');
}
I have an application that uses time() to record the time a topic was posted.
Very bad practice. In MySQL you have DateTime format (and each relational data base system has his own equivalent) to store date times and there are fully compatible with the DateTime constructor in PHP so migrate to it (use FROM_TIMESTAMP to change into DateTime).