Formatting a date string - PHP

Question

I have a dynamically allocated date from a search engine api results set entered into a multidimensional array, $search_results['Date']

There are two types of Date Data returned, first engine returns, for three result tests:

1. Example 1: 2013-07-22T12:00:03Z
2. Example 2: 2013-07-23T18:18:15Z
3. Example 3: 2013-07-21T23:57:04Z

And for the same items, different engine:

1. Example 1: 1374495037
2. Example 2: 1374528579
3. Example 3: 1374515617

I was hoping somebody here may have had experience on formatting dates and may be able to help me out?

I would like the format returned to be:

22nd July, 2013. 12.00pm

However the time part is not strictly necessary, but it would be nice to have the date sorted properly.

It seems the second engine returns the date in a bizarre format, can anybody figure it out? I am from Europe, we do dates different to those of you in America!?

Does anybody have any suggestions on how to format these dates?

Thanks Guys.

Answer 1

for first example, you can use first strtotime(), a function that converts datetime to UNIX timestamp like this:

$date = date('d/m/Y H:i:s',strtotime('2013-07-23T18:18:15Z'));
echo $date.'<br/>'; //put here just for  testing

and for second example you already have string as UNIX timestamp, so you don't need strtotime()

$date = date('d/m/Y H:i:s','1374495037');
echo $date.'<br/>';//put here just  for testing

format that you would like to return would be:

date('jS F, Y. h.ia',$unix_timestamp);

for other options for date formats consult: http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php