PHP, converted data into a Unix timestamp format

Question

I have a form that looks like this:

  <td>Starts</td>
  <td><label for="mm"></label>
    <select name="mm" id="mm">
      <option value="">---</option>
      <option value="01">Jan</option>
      <option value="02">Feb</option>
    </select>
    <label for="dd"></label>
    <select name="dd" id="dd">
   <option value="">--</option>
       <option value="1">01</option>
       <option value="2">02</option>
    </select>
    <label for="yy">
      <input type="text" name="year" id="year" />
    </label></td>

It is for people to choose the month | day | year. But the field in the database is Unix timestamp format.

Any ideas how can I take this data and converted into a Unix timestamp format for my database?

Marc B · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-05 22:20:52Z

3

Another alternative, in mysql:

INSERT ... UNIX_TIMESTAMP('$year-$month-$day') ...

once appropriate data sanitization and sql injection prevention's been taken care of.

answered Aug 5, 2011 at 22:20

Marc B

362k44 gold badges433 silver badges508 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

Grigor · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-05 22:16:48Z

2

This'll help you, very easy to follow.

php strotime();

answered Aug 5, 2011 at 22:16

Grigor

4,06910 gold badges44 silver badges80 bronze badges

Comments

Martin Bean · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-05 22:18:45Z

1

<?php
if ($_POST) {
    // convert POST to MySQL date format
    $date_string = sprintf('%04d-%02d-%02d', $_POST['year'], $_POST['mm'], $_POST['dd']);
    // if you need it in a UNIX timestamp, do the following
    $unix_timestamp = strtotime($date_string);
}

answered Aug 5, 2011 at 22:18

Martin Bean

39.6k28 gold badges134 silver badges207 bronze badges

2 Comments

Marc B Over a year ago

You've got months going in twice (mm).

Martin Bean Over a year ago

Cheers. Fixed now. It's been a long day!

K4emic · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-05 22:28:17Z

0

<?php

$time = new mktime($hour, $minute, $second, $month, $day, $year);

Or ..

<?php

$time = new DateTime();
$time->setDate($year, $month, $day);
// set both to 0, otherwise you will get the current time at the given day/month
$time->setTime($hour, $minute);

There's a ton of ways to do this in php, spend some time looking over the date/time functions

answered Aug 5, 2011 at 22:28

K4emic

4192 silver badges11 bronze badges

Comments

Peter · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-05 22:31:10Z

0

If the form fields are captured variables $mm, $dd, $yy, then

$timestemp = strtotime($yy . '-' . $mm . '-' . $dd);

will indeed give you an integer $timestamp (in epoch seconds), as Grigor correctly points out. But in general that may be only half the battle. In your case the Unix timestamp format makes things simple. But depending on your DB (and your associated drivers and DB abstraction layer) you may in some cases need to convert this into a date string of some form. For example, Oracle takes date strings of the form YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, which would be generated by

$oracle_date_string = gmdate("Y-m-d H:i:s", $timestamp);

answered Aug 5, 2011 at 22:31

Peter

2,5641 gold badge24 silver badges32 bronze badges

Comments

Jim C · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-05 22:35:34Z

0

After you have posted the form back to php, you will end up with your form data in the special global $_POST. If your user has selected a date completely, the code snippet set $unix_ts to the unix timestamp of the date.

<?php

  $unix_ts = null;

  // validate date
  if (is_numeric($_POST['dd']) || is_numeric($_POST['mm']) || is_numeric($_POST['year'])) {
    if (($tmp = strtotime($_POST['mm']."/".$_POST['dd']."/".$_POST['year'])) !== false) {  
       $unix_ts = $tmp;
    }
  } else {
    // display error message however you choose
    echo "Date not set<br>";
  }

  if ($unix_ts != null) { 
     // do query
  }

?>

answered Aug 5, 2011 at 22:35

Jim C

856 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

PHP, converted data into a Unix timestamp format

6 Answers 6

Comments

Comments

2 Comments

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

6 Answers 6

Comments

Comments

2 Comments

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related