zend locale is making me nervous: wrong datepresentation - php

Question

First I had problems with getting date's into my db see here. Now I have problems with getting it into the database on the right format.
This is my code:
public function editAction()
{
if($this->_request->getParam('id')){
$id = $this->_request->getParam('id');
$data = $this->_evtObj->selectOneRow($id);
// initialize the form
//var_dump($data);
$form = new JS_Form_EventForm();
$array = $data->toArray();
//$locale = Zend_Registry::get('locale');
$locale = new Zend_Locale();
$date1 = new Zend_Date($locale);
$date1->set($array[0]['evt_startdate']);
$array[0]['evt_startdate'] = $date1->get();
$array[0]['evt_enddate'] = date('%d-%m-%Y',(string)$array[0]['evt_enddate']);
$form->populate($array[0]);
$this->view->form =$form;
}
As you can see it populates the form with dates from the db. In the db the date is saved like 2010-01-15. As you can see in the above example i tried out two things:
locale = new Zend_Locale();
$date1 = new Zend_Date($locale);
$date1->set($array[0]['evt_startdate']);
$array[0]['evt_startdate'] = $date1->get();
This shows the date like: '1262300400'
and:
$array[0]['evt_enddate'] = date('%d-%m-%Y',(string)$array[0]['evt_enddate']);
this shows the date like: '%01-%01-%1970'
I want the date to be shown like dd-mm-yyyy
How to deal with this? All this date business drives me mad.
I am running zf 1.9.6
any idea's?

Answer 1

I'd suggest using something like this
$date = new Zend_Date($array[0]['evt_startdate'],Zend_Date::DATES);
$array[0]['evt_startdate'] = $date1->toString('dd-MM-YYYY');
Documentation

Answer 2

Try date('d-m-Y', $array[0]['evt_enddate'])
Also, the second param to date should be a timestamp. I do not know what is inside that array you use, but it certainly does not need to be typecasted to string. If you want to create timestamp from a formatted date, use strftime().
If you use get() without any arguments, the timestamp is returned. If you want to get the date part with time from Zend_Date use getDate() instead of get(). That will set the time part to 00:00:00 and return it with the date. If you only want the date part use get() with the DATE_MEDIUM constant. If you just want to format from Zend_Date, use Peter Lindqvist's suggested answer below.
Opinion: Personally I'd suggest to avoid Zend_Date altogether. I have the impression it is akward to use and pretty slow compared to PHP's native DateTime and DateTimezone classes. I use Zend_Date only for localized formatting nowadays, because that's where it shines.