Php – strtotime not working with mm-dd-yyyy

dateformattingPHPstrtotime

I have a script which is fed dates in numerous different formats.

I want to save these dates as timestamps so they can easily be manipulated/ordered.

When i try an convert a mm-dd-yyyy type date to a timestamp, it fails.

When the script runs, it does not know what format it will be fed, and as such this cannot be specified. Near all other formats of date seem to be converted fine.

Could anyone advise how to fix this, or alternatively an alternative way that all date formats can be converted to an orderable, consistent format that can be manipulated?

Many Thanks

Best Answer

It sees strings with - in them as dd-mm-yyyy and / as mm/dd/yyyy.

See also this question and the comments on the documentation.

Possible solutions / workarounds:

on php 5.3, use date_create_from_format
on older php and not on windows, use strptime
if neither can be used, either replace the - to / when necessary, or use one of the regexes suggested you can find through the linked question.

Note however that at some time you do need to know what the format is to start with. Computers are not mindreaders. They can't, and never will be able to, distinguish between mm-dd-yyyy and dd-mm-yyyy in the overlap ranges (both mm and dd <= 12) if you don't provide the distinction.

Related Solutions

Java – How to pad an integer with zeros on the left

Use java.lang.String.format(String,Object...) like this:

String.format("%05d", yournumber);

for zero-padding with a length of 5. For hexadecimal output replace the d with an x as in "%05x".

The full formatting options are documented as part of java.util.Formatter.

Javascript – Compare two dates with JavaScript

The Date object will do what you want - construct one for each date, then compare them using the >, <, <= or >=.

The ==, !=, ===, and !== operators require you to use date.getTime() as in

var d1 = new Date();
var d2 = new Date(d1);
var same = d1.getTime() === d2.getTime();
var notSame = d1.getTime() !== d2.getTime();

to be clear just checking for equality directly with the date objects won't work

var d1 = new Date();
var d2 = new Date(d1);

console.log(d1 == d2);   // prints false (wrong!) 
console.log(d1 === d2);  // prints false (wrong!)
console.log(d1 != d2);   // prints true  (wrong!)
console.log(d1 !== d2);  // prints true  (wrong!)
console.log(d1.getTime() === d2.getTime()); // prints true (correct)

I suggest you use drop-downs or some similar constrained form of date entry rather than text boxes, though, lest you find yourself in input validation hell.

For the curious, date.getTime() documentation:

Returns the numeric value of the specified date as the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC. (Negative values are returned for prior times.)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Java – How to pad an integer with zeros on the left

Javascript – Compare two dates with JavaScript

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