PHP | Converting string to Date and DateTime

Last Updated : 09 Jul, 2024

Converting the string to Date and DateTime uses several functions/methods like strtotime(), getDate(). We will see what these functions do.

strtotime()

This is basically a function which returns the number of seconds passed since Jan 1, 1970, just like a linux machine timestamp. It returns the number of seconds passed according to the parameter passed to the function.

Syntax

 strtotime(parameter);

Parameter

Time/Date
now(optional)

Return Type

Returns the number of seconds passed since Jan 1, 1970.

getDate()

This function return the date/time information of the passed parameter(date/time);

Syntax

getDate(parameter);

Parameter

The parameter is optional as it takes the current local time as default parameter.

Return Type

It returns the information of the date, day, year, month etc in an array.

Code for converting a string to date

php

<?php
$time_input = strtotime("2011/05/21"); 
$date_input = getDate($time_input); 
print_r($date_input);                
?>

Output

Array
(
    [seconds] => 0
    [minutes] => 0
    [hours] => 0
    [mday] => 21
    [wday] => 6
    [mon] => 5
    [year] => 2011
    [yday] => 140
    [weekday] => Saturday
    [month] => May
    [0] => 1305936000
)

Code for converting a string to dateTime

php

<?php
$input = '06/10/2011 19:00:02';
$date = strtotime($input);
echo date('d/M/Y h:i:s', $date);
?>

Output

10/Jun/2011 07:00:02

Note1

We can use “D” in the place of “d” for getting the day in the output

php

<?php
$input = '05/10/2011 15:00:02';
$date = strtotime($input);
echo date('D/M/Y h:i:s', $date);
?>

Output

Tue/May/2011 03:00:02

Note 2

We can use “H” in the place of “h” for getting the time in 24 Hour format in the output

php

<?php
$input = '05/10/2011 15:00:02';
$date = strtotime($input);
echo date('D/M/Y H:i:s', $date);
?>

Output

Tue/May/2011 15:00:02

Method 3: Using DateTime::createFromFormat()

The DateTime::createFromFormat() method allows for more flexible and precise parsing of date and time strings into DateTime objects. It enables you to specify the exact format of the input string, making it useful for converting strings that don’t conform to standard date/time formats.

Syntax:

DateTime::createFromFormat(format, time, object)

Example:

PHP

<?php
// String to be converted to DateTime
$dateString = "2021-07-05 17:57:38";

// Specify the format of the input string
$format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s';

// Convert the string to a DateTime object
$dateTime = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, $dateString);

// Output the result
echo $dateTime->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
?>

Output

2021-07-05 17:57:38

PHP is a server-side scripting language designed specifically for web development. You can learn PHP from the ground up by following this PHP Tutorial and PHP Examples.