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I have tried using date("m/d/Y", strtotime("04-05-2012")) but I will get "05/04/2012" or on some other dates for example "03-30-2012" I will get "12/31/1969" (which makes sense because it it mixing up the month and day and there is no 30th month. So how should I do this? I also want to then convert the value into a UNIX time so that I can search it against MySQL db.

Ray
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    `str_replace('-', '/', '04-05-2012')`? – gen_Eric Mar 27 '12 at 18:35
  • possible duplicate of [Convert date format for db](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7697609/convert-date-format-for-db) – jprofitt Mar 27 '12 at 18:38
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    Different countries have wildly different ideas about whether you should start with month or day. Is 04-05-2012 April 5th, or May 4th? Even Canada and USA have differing views on that one. Probably a better idea to switch to YYYY-mm-dd as your format. It also sorts better. – ghoti Mar 27 '12 at 18:40
  • `03-30` is march 30th, not the 3rd of month 30. – Marc B Mar 27 '12 at 18:40
  • I think I will do what @ghoti mentioned and use YYYY-mm-dd, I think it will work for what I need it to do. – Ray Mar 27 '12 at 18:50

4 Answers4

8

You can use the DateTime object and createFromFormat static method to do it :

$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('m-d-Y',"03-30-2012");
$date->format('m/d/Y');
Julius F
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artragis
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    That looks really helpful but we're using PHP 5.1.6 and that function wasn't implemented until 5.3.0. – Ray Mar 27 '12 at 18:44
  • perhaps a migration would be cool. We're now on php 5.4, and php 5.3.10 is out with more than 1,000 bug fixes and perf improvement. And some feature additions like DateTime, Intl... – artragis Mar 28 '12 at 15:14
6

If you know for certain that the format you start with is DD-MM-YYY when why not use a simple replace?

e.g. $newDate = str_replace('-', '/', '04-05-2012');

Ian Devlin
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1

One way to do it would be using explode() and mktime():

$inDate = '03-30-2012';
list($m, $d, $y) = explode('-', $inDate);
$outDate = date('m/d/Y', mktime(0, 0, 0, $m, $d, $y));

This assumes the format is somehow dynamic, though. Otherwise, str_replace() is your best option, as others pointed out.

FtDRbwLXw6
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0

This isn't so much a date format question as a string manipulation question.

But it's still good to know that strtotime() exists.

[ghoti@pc ~]$ cat transdate.php 
#!/usr/local/bin/php
<?php

$olddate = "04-05-2012"; // assuming mm-dd-YYYY

// Get the date parts into an array
$parts = explode("-", $olddate);
// Switch to YYYY-mm-dd, which will be interpreted consistently
$neworder = sprintf("%s-%s-%s", $parts[2], $parts[0], $parts[1]);

printf("New order: %s\n", $neworder);

// Set your timezone, or PHP will whine and complain
date_default_timezone_set('America/Toronto');
// Convert your reordered date to an epoch second (unix timestamp)
$epoch = strtotime($neworder);

// At a terminal, `man strftime` (or read the PHP function's docs) for details.
print "Alternate formats:\n";
printf("\t%s\n", strftime("%D", $epoch));
printf("\t%s\n", strftime("%F", $epoch));
printf("\t%s\n", strftime("%A %B %e, %Y (week %U)", $epoch));

[ghoti@pc ~]$ ./transdate.php 
New order: 2012-04-05
Alternate formats:
        04/05/12
        2012-04-05
        Thursday April  5, 2012 (week 14)
[ghoti@pc ~]$

This will work in PHP 5.1.6. Heck, it should work in PHP 4, except for date_default_timezone_set().

ghoti
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