Convert Javascript time to MySQL format using PHP

Question

How can I convert a js Date (like this Sun Jul 13 2014 07:00:00 GMT+0200 (EET)) to MySQL format (like this 2014-07-13 07:00:00) using php ?

Answer 1

Since your date string already contains the time zone, you don't need to do anything special:

$when = new DateTime('Sun Jul 13 2014 07:00:00 GMT+0200 (EET)');
echo $when->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

As helpfully noted in comments, this string actually contains two bits of time zone information, UTC + 2 and EET (Eastern European Time), and PHP is basically ignoring the second one. It's spotted better in this example:

var_dump(new DateTime('Sun Jul 13 2014 07:00:00 GMT+0200 (EET)'), DateTime::getLastErrors());
var_dump(new DateTime('Sun Jul 13 2014 07:00:00 GMT+0200'), DateTime::getLastErrors());
var_dump(new DateTime('Sun Jul 13 2014 07:00:00 (EET)'), DateTime::getLastErrors());

object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
  ["date"]=>
  string(26) "2014-07-13 07:00:00.000000"
  ["timezone_type"]=>
  int(1)
  ["timezone"]=>
  string(6) "+02:00"
}
array(4) {
  ["warning_count"]=>
  int(1)
  ["warnings"]=>
  array(1) {
    [34]=>
    string(29) "Double timezone specification"
  }
  ["error_count"]=>
  int(0)
  ["errors"]=>
  array(0) {
  }
}
object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
  ["date"]=>
  string(26) "2014-07-13 07:00:00.000000"
  ["timezone_type"]=>
  int(1)
  ["timezone"]=>
  string(6) "+02:00"
}
array(4) {
  ["warning_count"]=>
  int(0)
  ["warnings"]=>
  array(0) {
  }
  ["error_count"]=>
  int(0)
  ["errors"]=>
  array(0) {
  }
}
object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
  ["date"]=>
  string(26) "2014-07-13 07:00:00.000000"
  ["timezone_type"]=>
  int(2)
  ["timezone"]=>
  string(3) "EET"
}
array(4) {
  ["warning_count"]=>
  int(0)
  ["warnings"]=>
  array(0) {
  }
  ["error_count"]=>
  int(0)
  ["errors"]=>
  array(0) {
  }
}

We in fact need to strip one of them, e.g.:

$js_date_string = 'Sun Jul 13 2014 07:00:00 GMT+0200 (EET)';
// Regular expression is shown for illustration purposes, it's probably wrong!
$tmp_date_string = preg_replace('/ GMT\+\d{4}/ui', '', $js_date_string);

$when = new DateTime($tmp_date_string);
var_dump($when, DateTime::getLastErrors());
echo $when->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
  ["date"]=>
  string(26) "2014-07-13 07:00:00.000000"
  ["timezone_type"]=>
  int(2)
  ["timezone"]=>
  string(3) "EET"
}
array(4) {
  ["warning_count"]=>
  int(0)
  ["warnings"]=>
  array(0) {
  }
  ["error_count"]=>
  int(0)
  ["errors"]=>
  array(0) {
  }
}
2014-07-13 07:00:00