PHP Parsing of German Date

Question

I have a question about my code below. How can I format a German Date, for example "Di, 02.Okt 2012" to "2012-10-02"?

I already checked many sites for a solution but did not found something which could help me.

    $value ='Di, 02.Okt 2012';
    $tempdate = $value;
    $tempdate = substr($tempdate,-11);
    $tempdate = date('Y-m-d',$tempdate);

Output: 1970-01-01

Solved:

$value = 'comes from a foreach loop'; 

$tempdate = $value;
    $tempdate = substr($tempdate,-11);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Jan ', '-01-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Feb ', '-02-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Mär ', '-03-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Apr ', '-04-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Mai ', '-05-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Jun ', '-06-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Jul ', '-07-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Aug ', '-08-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Sep ', '-09-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Okt ', '-10-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Nov ', '-11-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = str_replace('.Dez ', '-12-', $tempdate);
    $tempdate = date('Y-m-d',strtotime($tempdate));

    echo $tempdate.'<br/>';

This is the solution for many Dates. ^^ i hope i can help with it

have you tried to cast using `strtotime` before you format with `date`? — atoms, Dec 16 '16 at 12:53
@tiger that one is close but doesn't include the day of the week *and* it doesn't have a **solution** which would not help the OP, yo — WEBjuju, Dec 16 '16 at 13:29

WEBjuju · Answer 1 · 2016-12-16T13:23:28.437

Passing the $date_string variable containing German days and months in it to a function that uses strtr (string translate) along with an array of German days (and Months) will allow strtotime (string to unix timestamp) to properly parse:

any English textual datetime description

Because strtotime (string to unix timestamp) only parses English, manual intervention to translate those strings is necessary without Internationalization.

function germanStrtotime($date_string) {
  $germanDays = array('montag'=>'monday', 'mo'=>'monday', 'dienstag'=>'tuesday', 'di'=>'tuesday', 'mittwoch'=>'wednesday', 'mi'=>'wednesday', 'donnerstag'=>'thursday', 'do'=>'thursday', 'freitag'=>'friday', 'fr'=>'friday', 'samstag'=>'saturday', 'sa'=>'saturday', 'sonntag'=>'sunday', 'so'=>'sunday');
  $germanMonths = array('jnuar'=>'january', 'jan'=>'january', 'jän'=>'january', 'februar'=>'february', 'feb'=>'february', 'marz'=>'march', 'märz'=>'march', 'mai'=>'may', 'juni'=>'june', 'oktober'=>'october', 'okt'=>'october', 'sept'=>'september', 'dezember'=>'december', 'dez'=>'december');
  $str = strtr(strtolower($date_string), $germanMonths);
  $str = strtr(strtolower($str), $germanDays);
  return strtotime($str);
}

$value ='Di, 02.Okt 2012';
$tempdate = $value;
$tempdate = germanStrtotime($tempdate);
$tempdate = date('Y-m-d', $tempdate);

die('Output: '.$tempdate); // 2012-10-02

Thats a good one too :) – Webdeveloper_Jelle Dec 16 '16 at 13:22 — Webdeveloper_Jelle, Dec 16 '16 at 13:22
Thx man ^^ i got this now aleady :D – Lovedeep Singh Dec 16 '16 at 13:27 — Lovedeep Singh, Dec 16 '16 at 13:27

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 16 '16 at 12:56

For internationalization tasks, I'd strongly recommend using the PHP intl extension. It contains several classes for common internationalization tasks such as date/time formatting, number formatting, string transliteration and more. Specifically, the IntlDateFormatter class is able to format (and parse) a datetime for any available locale.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 16 '16 at 13:37

1

This should work for your example.
When u have another date, replace "Okt" with another month and "-10-" with the number of the month.

$tempdate = 'Di, 02.Okt 2012';
$tempdate = str_replace('Di,', '', $tempdate);
$tempdate = str_replace('.Okt ', '-10-', $tempdate);
$tempdate = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($tempdate));
echo $tempdate;

// output: "2012-10-02"

edited Dec 16 '16 at 13:37

WEBjuju

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answered Dec 16 '16 at 13:09

Webdeveloper_Jelle

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Let's hope it's a *Tuesday in Oktober* ;) – WEBjuju Dec 16 '16 at 13:13
yeah if the day changes, he has to change Di too of course :) – Webdeveloper_Jelle Dec 16 '16 at 13:16
nice but i have not only this one Date so i have to make a Replace for all Mounts ^^ – Lovedeep Singh Dec 16 '16 at 13:40
I would make $tempdate = substr($tempdate,-11); than $tempdate = str_replace('Di,', '', $tempdate); because ist for all new Verables – Lovedeep Singh Dec 16 '16 at 13:52

PHP Parsing of German Date

3 Answers3