PHP strtotime returning false for UTC time

Question

My colleague and I are obtaining different results from some unit tests that use strtotime.

The discrepancy originates in this line:

$value = strtotime('2050-05-01T20:10:29.410Z');

on my machine, this result returns the following:

int(2535048629)

whereas my colleague's version returns false

We are both using PHP version 5.4.14 and PHPUnit 3.724.

Has anyone got any idea what is causing this discrepancy, and is there a more robust approach?

32-bit vs 64-bit? Can you verify? – Halcyon Oct 23 '13 at 16:20 — Halcyon, Oct 23 '13 at 16:20
Ah, I'm 64 bit. he's 32... – sunwukung Oct 23 '13 at 16:21 — sunwukung, Oct 23 '13 at 16:21

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 23 '13 at 16:22

2

It's likely related to 32-bit vs 64-bit. Timestamps in the year 2050 are larger than 32 bits.

answered Oct 23 '13 at 16:22

Halcyon

in the end I awarded the answer to Glavic, given that his explanation adds a little more detail for others that may encounter the same issue. – sunwukung Oct 24 '13 at 08:35

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

This is because he is on 32-bit and you are on 64-bit machine. See what echo PHP_INT_MAX; returns on both machines. More read here.

If you wish to get timestamp on 32-bit machine, you can use DateTime as:

$value = new DateTime('2050-05-01T20:10:29.410Z');
echo $value->format('U');  // returns 2535048629 as string

or format inputed timestamp as:

$value = new DateTime('@2535048629');
echo $value->format('r'); // Sun, 01 May 2050 20:10:29 +0000

instead of date('r', '2535048629'); which will not work on 32-bit machine.

2 Answers2