PHP function to get the date format? - php

I know how to use date format strings, to turn date('Y/m/d H:i:s'); into 2009/12/18 11:37:45.
I would like a function that can do the opposite - look at a formatted date then return the format. Is there one in PHP?
The reason is we have timestamps saved in our database in a variety of formats and I am writing a tool processing all of our old tables and analyzing the date entries.
EDIT: so I guess there isn't a straight-forward way to do this. I was thinking I could use strftime(), which returns the time in seconds since the epoch. So a better question is can I use that time in seconds in the timestamp fields in the mySQL database? I would guess this would work if the table is structured as a timestamp and not a varchar,which is sometimes is.

No, there isn't such a function. You'll need to write a set of regular expression matches which express all the possible variations, e.g.
$variations = array (
'^([0-9]{4})/[0-9]{2}/[0-9]{2} [0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{4}2$' => 'Y/m/d H:i:s',
// more here
);
foreach ($dateFromDatabase as $date) {
foreach ($variations as $regexp => $dateFormat) {
if (preg_match ('|' . $regexp . '|', $date)) {
$matches[$dateFromDatabase] = $dateFormat;
break;
}
}
}
// $matches now consists of an array of dates => format

Yes, there does exist a function for this: strtotime()
strtotime — Parse about any English textual datetime description into a Unix timestamp
EDIT: Okay, the function might not return the formatting used, but you will get the timestamp, and then you're able to store it in any format.

Take a look into strptime().

You could use regexp to identifiy specific date formats. You could add to your regexp list until you have 100% coverage.
if(preg_match('/^\d{4}\/\d{2}\/\d{2} \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}$/', $Date))
$Format = 'Y/m/d H:i:s';
etc...

You dont need to get the date into m/d/Y format. You can use strtotime to turn any valid date into any other date format you want.
date( 'format', strtotime($date) );

Maybe its a better idea to save them all as unix timestamps then you can format them on the fly very easily depending on what your users want to see.

Related

separating a weird formatted timestamp into an understandable date

I'm working with an XML document that is returning variables and for some reason in a xml return the timestamp is formatted like this... 20180606T110000 ... why anyone would format it like that makes no sense to me; however, its what I have to work with. ITs formatted YYYYMMDD , the T is the split between date and time, HHMMSS. ITs set up in a 24 Hour clock that I also need to convert to 12 hr clock with am/pm
I need that formatted like 06/06/2018 11:00:00 AM.
Is there a way to do that via a date format (I know how to use date() but I don't know how to bring in that timestamp the way its formatted) or even separating it out into
$year = xxxx
$month = xx
$day = $xx
$Hour=xx
etc. etc. etc.
if need be.
I've briefly looked at php's date create from format ( date_create_from_format('j-M-Y', '15-Feb-2009') ) but dont fully understand how that works.
I've also thought about a split. I've also looked at chunk_split and wordwrap but its not even amounts of characters so that would be complex to create.
Any ideas?
The format you're working with is "XMLRPC (Compact)" format. This is fully supported by PHP (you can see a list of supported formats here). To get what you want, just use a combination of strtotime() and date().
$timestring = "20180606T110000";
$timestamp = strtotime($timestring);
echo date("m/d/Y h:i:s A", $timestamp);
You can use PHP DateTime to parse a datetime String with any format. Please view the Parameters format in the following link to understand how the "Ymd\THis" part works: http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.createfromformat.php
<?php
$time = "20180606T110000";
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat("Ymd\THis", $time);
// 06/06/2018 11:00:00 AM.
echo $date->format("d/m/Y h:i:s A");

PHP convert string into date time

I have a php string from db it is 20/11/2017 I want to convert it milliseconds.
It's my code to doing that.
$the_date = "20/11/2017";
$mill_sec_date = strtotime($the_date);
var_dump($mill_sec_date);
But it does not print any thing rather than
bool(false);
What is the problem and how can i solve it ????
When using slashes to separate parts of the date, PHP recognizes the format as MM/DD/YYYY. Which makes your date invalid because there is no 20th month. If you want to use the format where day and month is swapped, you need to use hyphens, like DD-MM-YYYY.
$time = strtotime('10/16/2003');
$newformat = date('Y-m-d',$time);
print_r($newformat);
Use DateTime class to call function createFromFormat
$date = date_create_from_format('d/M/Y:H:i:s', $string);
$date->getTimestamp();
Most likely you got the date format wrong, see
here for a list of supported date and time formats:
This section describes all the different formats that the strtotime(), DateTime and date_create() parser understands.
You string is not accept by the strtotime, you can use createFromFormat set set the with the format type of the time string like below, you can also check the live demo. And you also can refer to this answer
var_dump(DateTime::createFromFormat('d/m/Y', "20/11/2017"));

How to format date in PHP from a string of concatenated numbers?

I am new to PHP and I am trying to learn more of php date and time but I seem to get stuck with this.
I have this date format:
ddMMyyHHmmss
And an example is 120813125055 but I am trying to manipulate the string such that it will give me the format of:
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss (in the example above, 2013-08-12 12:50:55)
I tried to do something like:
date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('120813125055'));
But it always gives me a result of 1969-12-31 18:00:00.
I assume that I need to do some string manipulation in PHP for this but I was wondering if there is an easier and more efficient way to do it?
I think what you're looking for is in the second response answered here: how to re-format datetime string in php?
To summarize (and apply to your example), you could modify the code like this.
$datetime = "120813125055";
$d = DateTime::createFromFormat("dmyHis", $datetime);
echo $d->format("Y-m-d H:i:s");
Use date_create_from_format:
$ts = date_create_from_format('dmyHis', '120813125055');
$str = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $ts);
strtotime() only works on EASILY recognizable formats. Your is a ugly mix of garbage, so no surprise that strtotime bails with a boolean FALSE for failure, which then gets typecast to an int 0 when you tried feed it back into date().
And of course, note that your time string is NOT y2k compliant. two digit years should never ever be used anymore, except for display purposes.
You're using your function call and the argument the wrong way around.
In your example, php will try to return you the date for which the time is 'strtotime('120813125055')', and this function returns false (interpreted as 0). So you get returned the date formatted in 'Y-m-d H:i:s' for the Unix epoch.
You will need to get the actual timestamp of your string, so use http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.createfromformat.php.
You are mistaken here..
I tried to do something like:
date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('120813125055'));
You shouldn't use only numbers ( doesnt matter its an integer or a string ), than it will always give you the same thing.
You can use any other valid date and time ( E.G. 6 Jun 2013, 5 may 12...) . Because what strtotime() do is detect a valid date and convert it into timestamp.

Function to parse psql timestamp

I display the date or the time on my website a lot and I'm thinking about writing a function to parse a PostgreSQL timestamp.
The timestamp is in the format: Y-m-d H:i:s.u. E.g. 2011-04-08 23:00:56.544.
I'm thinking about something like this:
function parse_timestamp($timestamp, $format = 'd-m-Y')
{
// parse the timestamp
return $formatted_timestamp;
}
However I am wondering whether this can also be achieved without writing a parser for it myself (with the use of some PHP function).
function parse_timestamp($timestamp, $format = 'd-m-Y')
{
return date($format, strtotime($timestamp));
}
Don't forget to set timezone before, e.g.
date_default_timezone_set('UTC');
Or in your case, I guess 'Europe/Amsterdam'.
You can always get PHP timestamp of this format Y-m-d H:i:s.u using strtotime(). Then, using date() you can export time in your own format. Both functions depend of time zone set.
strtotime is perfectly capable of parsing that time string, then just reformat it with date:
echo date('d-m-Y', strtotime('2011-04-08 23:00:56.544')); // 08-04-2011
For those using DateTime class:
DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s.u', $yourTime);
If the database isn't giving you what you want, change it. PostgreSQL can also format dates and times.
select to_char(timestamp '2011-03-04 07:04:00', 'DD-MM-YYYY');
04-03-2011
But that's risky in international contexts, like the web. Different locales expect different ordering of elements. (Does "04-03" mean 03-April or 04-March?) This expression is easier to understand, and it uses locale-specific abbreviations for the months.
select to_char(timestamp '2011-03-04 07:04:00', 'DD-Mon-YYYY');
04-Mar-2011
Take a look at the strptime function - it can parse many time formats.

PHP converting date format

Duplicate
Managing date formats differences between PHP and MySQL
PHP/MySQL: Convert from YYYY-MM-DD to DD Month, YYYY?
Format DATETIME column using PHP after printing
date formatting in php
Dear All,
I have a PHP page where i wil be displaying some data from Mysql db.
I have 2 dates to display on this page.In my db table, Date 1 is in the format d/m/Y (ex: 11/11/2002) and Date 2 is in the format d-m-Y (ex : 11-11-2002)
I need to display both of this in the same format .The format i have stored in a variable $dateFormat='m/d/Y'
Can any one guide me
Thanks in advance
Use strtotime to convert the strings into a Unix timestamp, then use the date function to generate the correct output format.
Since you're using the UK date format "d/m/Y", and strtotime expects a US format, you need to convert it slighly differently:
$date1 = "28/04/2009";
$date2 = "28-04-2009";
function ukStrToTime($str) {
return strtotime(preg_replace("/^([0-9]{1,2})[\/\. -]+([0-9]{1,2})[\/\. -]+([0-9]{1,4})/", "\\2/\\1/\\3", $str));
}
$date1 = date($dateFormat, ukStrToTime($date1));
$date2 = date($dateFormat, ukStrToTime($date2));
You should be all set with this:
echo date($dateFormat, strtotime($date1));
echo date($dateFormat, strtotime($date2));
You may want to look into the strptime function. This can convert any date from a string back into numeric values. Unlike strtotime, it can be adapted to different formats, including those from different locales, and its output is not a UNIX timestamp, so it's capable of parsing dates before 1970 and after 2037. It may be a little bit more work though because it returns an associative array though.
Unfortunately it's not available on Windows systems either so it's not portable.
If for some reason strtotime will not work for you, could always just replace the offending punctuation with str_replace.
function dateFormat($date) {
$newDate = str_replace(/, -, $date);
echo $newDate;
}
echo dateFormat($date1);
echo dateFormat($date2);
I know this will make most folks cringe, but it may help you with formatting non-date strings in the future.
rookie i am. so came up with the method that just do that. what mysql needs.. shish i used param 2... hope it helps. regards
public function dateConvert($date,$param){
if($param==1){
list($day,$month,$year)=split('[/.-]',$date);
$date="$year-$month-$day"; //changed this line
return $date;
}
if ($param == 2){ //output conversion
list($day,$month,$year) = split('[/.]', $date);
$date = "$year-$day-$month";
return $date;
}
}

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