Converting string to Date and DateTime
Use strtotime()
on your first date then date('Y-m-d')
to convert it back:
$time = strtotime('10/16/2003');$newformat = date('Y-m-d',$time);echo $newformat;// 2003-10-16
Make note that there is a difference between using forward slash /
and hyphen -
in the strtotime()
function. To quote from php.net:
Dates in the m/d/y or d-m-y formats are disambiguated by looking at the separator between the various components: if the separator is a slash (/), then the American m/d/y is assumed; whereas if the separator is a dash (-) or a dot (.), then the European d-m-y format is assumed.
To avoid potential ambiguity, it's best to use ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) dates or DateTime::createFromFormat() when possible.
You need to be careful with m/d/Y and m-d-Y formats. PHP considers /
to mean m/d/Y and -
to mean d-m-Y. I would explicitly describe the input format in this case:
$ymd = DateTime::createFromFormat('m-d-Y', '10-16-2003')->format('Y-m-d');
That way you are not at the whims of a certain interpretation.
To parse the date, you should use: DateTime::createFromFormat();
Ex:
$dateDE = "16/10/2013";$dateUS = \DateTime::createFromFormat("d.m.Y", $dateDE)->format("m/d/Y");
However, careful, because this will crash with:
PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function format() on a non-object
You actually need to check that the formatting went fine, first:
$dateDE = "16/10/2013";$dateObj = \DateTime::createFromFormat("d.m.Y", $dateDE);if (!$dateObj){ throw new \UnexpectedValueException("Could not parse the date: $date");}$dateUS = $dateObj->format("m/d/Y");
Now instead of crashing, you will get an exception, which you can catch, propagate, etc.
$dateDE has the wrong format, it should be "16.10.2013";