What's going on with strtotime here?
$today = date('m.d.y H:i', time());
echo strtotime($today);
It does not output anything... What's going on?
4 Answers
strtotime can only parse certain formats, not any random assortment of numbers and letters. "m.d.y H:i" is not a format strtotime can parse. You'll need to parse that manually using, for example, strptime.
Comments
Use DateTime::createFromFormat() if you know source format of date ('m.d.y H:i') in your example
print DateTime::createFromFormat('m.d.y H:i',$date)->getTimestamp()
Comments
strtotime works with US dates. Try
$today = date('m/d/y H:i', time());
echo strtotime($today);
Comments
strtotime() is a function for formatting the date, before it is outputted. It seems like the date is already formated in the date() function, and that you make no attempt to format the date in the second line.
Correct code
$today = date("Y-m-d-H.i");
$datenumber = date('Y-m-d',strtotime($today));
$timenumber = date('H.i',strtotime($today));
You can echo all those variables.
3 Comments
deceze
strtotime is a function for turning a string into a timestamp. date does the reverse and turns a timestamp into a string.
desbest
I don't use timestamps ever with php, and insert all dates and times into a mysql database as a VARCHAR string and not has a TIME timestamp. You're right. I didn't know that. For me,
date is for specifying a date format, and strtotime is for changing the format of an outputted date, or moving a date forward or backward in time by a specified time period.deceze
If you've ever used
strtotime or have ever added a number to a time, you have used timestamps. :o)
m.d.yis an ambiguous date format. TryY-m-d.