PHP date/strtotime converting to incorrect date

Question

On some occasions data() is converting my dates incorrectly.

My date formats look like so: Fri Oct 25 15:00:00 EDT 2011

The date string comes from an external source, so I'm unable to change the format.

// output incorrect - Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:00:00 -0400
date("r", strtotime("Fri Oct 25 15:00:00 EDT 2011"))

// output correct - Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:00:00 -0400
date("r", strtotime("Fri Oct 21 15:00:00 EDT 2011"))

I can't figure out why just changing the day makes it fail to convert.

My end goal is to create a DateTime object but it suffers from the same problem.

// output - Fri Oct 28 19:00:00 EDT 2011
DateTime("Fri Oct 22 19:00:00 EDT 2011")

Just a shot in the dark -- October 21 and 28th are Fridays, but not the 22nd or the 25th. — Bob Kaufman
– Bob Kaufman, Commented Oct 21, 2011 at 22:17
Wow, that's embarrassing... how did I not notice that. I will have to speak with the devs of the feed. Thanks so much. — Paramount
– Paramount, Commented Oct 21, 2011 at 22:20

Marc B · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-21 22:20:00Z

3

Oct 25/2011 is a tuesday. Strtotime is interpreting your date string as "what's the next friday AFTER Oct 25th", and is returning (what it thinks) is the correct answer: October 28th.

So, the GIGO rule applies. You're feeding in garbage, and wondering why you're getting garbage out.

answered Oct 21, 2011 at 22:20

Marc B

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5 Comments

Stanislav Shabalin Over a year ago

GIGO rule is awesome. Never heard of that expression before :-)

Paramount Over a year ago

Thanks for the explanation, as I said I can not change the feed but I will have to speak with the devs.

dvir Over a year ago

@Paramount: maybe you could change the devs then since they messed up your dates? :) BTW, you can just strip out the day out of the given dates and it will work just as good, since you have the day, month & year in it...

Paramount Over a year ago

@Dvir Azulay Thanks. Stripping it out seems easiest, as I would just need to substr from the index of the first space.

Marc B Over a year ago

@Paramount: Yep, a substr is definitely the easiest. strtotime is a magical function sometimes, but when it screws up, it screws up bigtime.

Mob · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-21 22:22:00Z

0

The value you're passing into strtotime doesn't tally. There's no Friday 25th, 2011.

http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/monthly.html

answered Oct 21, 2011 at 22:22

Mob

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1 Comment

Mob Over a year ago

@JackMurdoch Skipped October.

Stanislav Shabalin · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-21 22:22:44Z

0

date() works fine. Problem is, in your examples with incorrect output specified date is not Friday.

You can strip out first 4 characters if it always is Fri.

answered Oct 21, 2011 at 22:22

Stanislav Shabalin

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