strtotime - what constitutes "english textual datetime"?

[ahs10]

so from the manual the description is...

 

strtotime — Parse about any English textual datetime description into a Unix timestamp

 

i'm trying to find a more specific way to define "english textual datetime".  if just dealing with date shorthand formats (ex - mm/dd/yy), would it be safe to say any format that lists the month before the day?  is that accurate?

[bpops]

It's actually very impressive what it can do.. pretty much any way you might write the date, it will figure it out. so

February 21, 2008

2008-02-21

2/21/08

 

I'm pretty sure it would get all of them. Best thing to do is to pick one, make sure it works, then use it consistently for your site.

[ahs10]

nope, from previous experience i know proper sql datetime format (yyyy-mm-dd) does not work.  that's not a English datetime description (although the one that makes the most sense).

 

that's why i'm trying to grasp the limitations of that term.  if i were dealing with dates on my site, i would be consistent, but this is a hard situation to explain.  none the yahoo, i'd still like to find the scope of the term "english textual datetime".  thanks!

[bpops]

Actually, it does. I use the Mysql format on my site and it works perfectly. If $date has been grabbed from the mysql database (in yyyy-mm-dd format), then

 

$time_s = strtotime($date);

$date = date("F j, Y", $time_s);

 

gives me a new string $date that will display 'February 21, 2008' format.

[Daniel0]

nope, from previous experience i know proper sql datetime format (yyyy-mm-dd) does not work. that's not a English datetime description (although the one that makes the most sense).

Although it may not be specifically English it is an ISO standard called ISO 8601.

 

Edit: As specified in the PHP manual can you see all the supported formats here: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/tar_113.html

[ahs10]

thanks for that gnu link, that's perfect.

 

so i still hold on to the belief that yyyy-mm-dd does not work with strtotime all the time.  i remember a couple of months back posting an issue with that.  the solution provided to me was a great tutorial on using DATE_FORMAT and STR_TO_DATE in your db queries.

 

anyweezer, thanks for the discussion and i believe that link was just what i needed.  thanks again!

 

 

 

[Barand]

Here's a script to check out various acceptable formats

 

<?php 
$formats = array(
              'Y-m-d',  
              'm/d/Y',
              'd/m/Y',
              'm-d-Y',
              'd-m-Y',
              'd-M-Y',
              'd F Y',
              'F d Y'
);

echo '<table border="1">';
    echo '<tr><td>Format</td><td>Today</td><td>strtotime()</td><td>OK?</td></tr>';
foreach  ($formats as $f)
{
    $res = date ('d M Y', strtotime (date($f)));
    $OK = $res == date('d M Y') ? 'OK' : 'X';
    echo '<tr><td>', $f, '</td><td>', date($f), '</td><td>', $res, '</td><td>', $OK, '</td></tr>';
}
echo '</table>';

?>