PHP - Parse datetime with locale strings

Question

I want to parse datetimes like 'Ayer, 16:08' which is 'Yesterday, 16:08' in spanish.

I have tried this

$dateString = 'Ayer, 16:08';
setlocale(LC_ALL, 'es');
$time = strtotime($dateString);
echo date('d-m-Y H:i', $time);

but it echoes

01-01-1970 00:00

Nevertheless, if I do it with english strings it works just fine:

$dateString = 'Yesterday, 16:08';
$time = strtotime($dateString);
echo date('d-m-Y H:i', $time);

Is it a problem with locale?

Thanks

Answer 1

You'll need to translate it into English before making the date.

Create an array with the Spanish words, and another with the corresponding English translations, as recognised by PHP. Then simply run str_ireplace() with $dateString.

Something like this should work:

$spanish = array("spanish1", "spanish2", "spanish3");
$english = array("en_translation_of_spanish1", "en_translation_spanish2", "en_translation_of_spanish3");
$dateString = str_ireplace($spanish, $english, 'Ayer, 16:08');

Answer 2

These days there is IntlDateFormatter for this purpose, see this stackoverflow answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32265594/682317

Copied here:

This is the answer:

$formatter = new IntlDateFormatter("en_US", IntlDateFormatter::SHORT, IntlDateFormatter::NONE);
$unixtime=$formatter->parse($date);

And this is the previous test working with my answer.

<?php
echo "EN locale<br>\r\n";
$date="01/02/2015"; //2th Jan
$formatter = new IntlDateFormatter("en_US", IntlDateFormatter::SHORT, IntlDateFormatter::NONE);
$unixtime=$formatter->parse($date);
$datetime=new DateTime();
$datetime->setTimestamp($unixtime);
echo $datetime->format('Y-m-d');
echo "<br>\r\n";

echo "IT locale<br>\r\n";
$date="01/02/2015"; //1th Feb
$formatter = new IntlDateFormatter("it_IT", IntlDateFormatter::SHORT, IntlDateFormatter::NONE);
$unixtime=$formatter->parse($date);
$datetime=new DateTime();
$datetime->setTimestamp($unixtime);
echo $datetime->format('Y-m-d');
echo "<br>\r\n";

Unfortunately I cannot earn my bounty... :-)

Answer 3

In Manual I can't see anything about others languages. So, you need translate it, as Zumi said