Datetime to Timestamp in milliseconds in PHP

Question

I would like to create a timestamp in milliseconds from the input '2016-03-22 14:30'. Also the timezone specified should be Australia/Sydney.

I've tried different approaches but none seem to be working.

Can anyone help me please? I'm really struggling with that.

Post some code of things you have attempted and why they didn't work. Edit the question, not in the comments. — Tim Ogilvy, Mar 21 '16 at 05:25

score 21 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 15 '21 at 01:16

Answers with * 1000 are only formatting the output, but don't capture the precision.

With DateTime->format, where U is for seconds, u for microsecond and v for millisecond:

<?php
// pass down `now` or a saved timestamp like `2021-06-15 01:03:35.678652`
$now = new \DateTime('now', new \DateTimeZone('UTC'));
// or something like:
$now = DateTime::createFromFormat('U.u', number_format(microtime(true), 6, '.', ''), new \DateTimeZone('UTC'));

// in microseconds:
$now_us = (int)$now->format('Uu');
// e.g.: 1623719015678652


// in milliseconds:
$now_ms = (int)$now->format('Uv');
// e.g.: 1623719015678

Kylie · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-21T05:05:03.483

12

Pretty self explanatory code, so I wont say much.

date_default_timezone_set('Australia/Sydney'); // set timezone
$yourdate = '2016-03-22 14:30';
$stamp = strtotime($yourdate); // get unix timestamp
$time_in_ms = $stamp*1000;

If you want to display it properly.

echo number_format($time_in_ms, 0, '.', '');

edited Mar 21 '16 at 05:05

answered Mar 21 '16 at 04:59

Kylie

11,421
11
47
78

4

You missed - *in miliseconds* I guess. – Sougata Bose Mar 21 '16 at 05:01
1

Just miltiply by 1000, but it doesnt really make sense why you would want a date converted into milliseconds, unless you're comparing to another date. Because this will just return the amount of milliseconds elapsed since 1970 – Kylie Mar 21 '16 at 05:04
3

@KyleK it's possible he needed it that way to connect to an API that only accepts time stamps with milliseconds, since that's precisely the reason as to why I came to this very answer – Brian Leishman Sep 25 '16 at 04:24
1

This is not in milliseconds, this is in seconds*1000 – Sos. May 26 '20 at 09:08

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 21 '16 at 05:08

2

Try this it will work

<?php
$date = new DateTime('@'.strtotime('2016-03-22 14:30'), new DateTimeZone('Australia/Sydney'));

echo "Timestamp in Australia/Sydney: ".$date->format('Y-m-d H:i:sP');
echo "<br/>";
echo "Timestamp in miliseconds Australia/Sydney: ".strtotime($date->format('Y-m-d H:i:sP'));
?>

Output:

Timestamp in Australia/Sydney: 2016-03-22 18:30:00+00:00
Timestamp in miliseconds Australia/Sydney: 1458671400

answered Mar 21 '16 at 05:08

Rohit Raj Verma

138
10

Hi Rohit, unfortunately,it's not working. I would like to create a time in milliseconds from the input '2016-03-22 14:30' to post it on [Onfleet](http://onfleet.com) as part of a task. As written on [Onfleet Data Types page](http://docs.onfleet.com/v2.0/docs/data-types-and-response-formats), the timestamps they use "are consumed and produced in Unix epoch time format, with millisecond precision". when passing the timestamp I receive a message that the timestamp is invalid. – Hyacinthe Mar 21 '16 at 05:15
@Hyacinthe What is the output you are getting? – Rohit Raj Verma Mar 21 '16 at 05:17
Have you tried this timestamp 1458671400 . Because Unix epoch time format is same as normal unix timestamp. – Rohit Raj Verma Mar 21 '16 at 05:28
Please test it and give me any timestamp example if it wont work. – Rohit Raj Verma Mar 21 '16 at 05:28

simPod · Answer 4 · 2022-10-30T08:14:19.207

2

For those looking how to get timestamp in milliseconds from DateTime, this is what I've come up with:

$date = new DateTimeImmutable();

$timestampMs = (int) $date->format('Uv');
$timestampMs = (int) ($date->getTimestamp() . $date->format('v'));
$timestampUs = (int) $date->format('Uu');

This gets timestamp in seconds and appends milliseconds ('v' format).

https://3v4l.org/UoZsL

edited Oct 30 '22 at 08:14

answered Jul 01 '20 at 09:54

simPod

11,498
17
86
139

I was getting confused on why the `v` format was outputting as text, then in your link I realized it only gets recognized starting at PHP v7. I was able to just do `$date->getTimestamp() * 1000` on a PHP v5.4 to get the same value, hopefully no weird gotchas with that. – Kerry Johnson Oct 14 '22 at 01:12
`* 1000` gives you seconds in milliseconds but not actual milliseconds. As you can see, you're loosing precision here: https://3v4l.org/bMhAZ – simPod Oct 14 '22 at 09:03
I didn't know that - how would you recommend those that don't have the option to use `$date->format('v'))` to get the same precision? – Kerry Johnson Oct 29 '22 at 20:45
PHP v5.4 was end-of-life at 14 Sep 2015, nobody should use that anymore – Michael B. Mar 02 '23 at 23:46

Xerkus · Answer 5 · 2016-03-21T10:23:04.580

You can use createFromFormat method of DateTime or, better, DateTimeImmutable while passing timezone as third parameter. This way you do not need to rely on default timezone, which is never a good idea

$datetime = DateTimeImmutable::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i', '2016-03-22 14:30', new DateTimeZone('Australia/Sydney'));
echo $datetime->getTimestamp();
echo $datetime->format(DateTime::ISO8601);

You can also convert it to another timezone, note that it produced new DateTimeImmutable and original left untouched:

echo $utcTzDatetime = $date->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
echo $utcTzDatetime->format(DateTime::ISO8601);
echo $datetime->format(DateTime::ISO8601);

Upd:

If format is not fixed, you can let DateTime guess it:

new DateTimeImmutable($time, new DateTimeZone('Australia/Sydney'));

But be aware that if $time string contains timezone or offset, eg '2016-03-22T14:30-0500', it will have priority over timezone parameter and will result in different timestamp!

This is the idiomatic approach in PHP – Darragh Enright Feb 05 '19 at 09:36 — Darragh Enright, Feb 05 '19 at 09:36

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 31 '19 at 06:44

If you are using Carbon package then you can use

Carbon::parse('2009-09-22 16:47:08.128')->micro

This will return you time in microseconds. You can divide that by 1000 and concatenate that with the epoch timestamp of same date in seconds.
Just make sure that if the date format has no millisecond component then you will get 0 as microseconds and you will have to pad that 0 with extra zeroes before concatenation.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 03 '20 at 13:05

0

Try this method simply

<?php
$time = microtime(true);
$datetime = new DateTime();
$datetime->setTimestamp($time);
$format = $datetime->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
var_dump($format);
?>

answered Mar 03 '20 at 13:05

Rahul Kr Daman

387
3
15

Joshua · Answer 8 · 2016-03-21T08:56:10.103

-2

date_default_timezone_set("Australia/Sydney");
echo strtotime('2016-03-22 14:30') * 1000;

Output: 1458617400000

edited Mar 21 '16 at 08:56

answered Mar 21 '16 at 05:25

Joshua

187
12

Thanks a lot for your help! – Hyacinthe Mar 21 '16 at 05:37

Datetime to Timestamp in milliseconds in PHP

8 Answers8

Linked