PHP Timestamp into DateTime

Question

Do you know how I can convert this to a strtotime, or a similar type of value to pass into the DateTime object?

The date I have:

Mon, 1         


        

Answer 1

While @drrcknlsn is correct to assert there are multiple ways to convert a time string to a datatime, it's important to realize that these different ways don't deal with timezones in the same way.

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Option 1 : DateTime('@' . $timestamp)

Consider the following code :

date_format(date_create('@'. strtotime('Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:17:52 +0800')), 'c');

The strtotime bit eliminates the time zone information, and the date_create function assumes GMT (Europe/Brussels).

As such, the output will be the following, no matter which server I run it on :

2011-12-12T13:17:52+00:00

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Option 2 : date_create()->setTimestamp($timestamp)

Consider the following code :

date_format(date_create()->setTimestamp(strtotime('Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:17:52 +0800')), 'c');

You might expect this to produce the same output. However, if I execute this code from a Belgian server, I get the following output :

2011-12-12T14:17:52+01:00

Unlike the date_create function, the setTimestamp method assumes the time zone of the server ('Europe/Brussels' in my case) rather than GMT.

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Explicitly setting your time zone

If you want to make sure your output matches the time zone of your input, it's best to set it explicitly.

Consider the following code :

date_format(date_create('@'. strtotime('Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:17:52 +0800'))->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('Asia/Hong_Kong')), 'c')

Now, also consider the following code :

date_format(date_create()->setTimestamp(strtotime('Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:17:52 +0800'))->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('Asia/Hong_Kong')), 'c')

Because we explicitly set the time zone of the output to match that of the input, both will create the same (correct) output :

2011-12-12T21:17:52+08:00