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The strtotime[] function is a built-in function in PHP which is used to convert an English textual date-time description to a UNIX timestamp. The function accepts a string parameter in English which represents the description of date-time. For e.g., “now” refers to the current date in English date-time description. The function returns the time in seconds since the Unix Epoch. We can return the English textual date-time in date format using the date[] function.
Syntax:
strtotime [$EnglishDateTime, $time_now]
Parameters: The function accepts two parameters as shown above and described below:
- $EnglishDateTime – This parameter specifies the English textual date-time description, which represents the date or time to be returned. The function parses the string and returns us the time in seconds. The parameter is mandatory
- $time_now This parameter specifies the timestamp used to calculate the returned value. It is an optional parameter.
Note: Since the time/date is not static, therefore the output will vary.
Below programs illustrate the strtotime[] function.
Program 1: The below program demonstrates the strtotime[]
function when the english text is “now”.
Output:
1525378260 2018-05-03
Program
2: The below program demonstrates the strtotime[]
function when the english text is a date.
Output:
1486857600 2017-02-12
Program 3: The below program demonstrates the strtotime[]
function when the english text corresponds to any day.
Output:
1525564800 2018-05-06
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.
[PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8]
strtotime — Parse about any English textual datetime description into a Unix timestamp
Description
strtotime[string $datetime
, ?int $baseTimestamp
= null
]:
int|false
The function expects to be given a string containing an English date format and will try to parse that format into a Unix timestamp [the number of seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00 UTC], relative to the timestamp given in baseTimestamp
, or the current time if baseTimestamp
is not supplied. The date string parsing is defined in Date and Time Formats, and
has several subtle considerations. Reviewing the full details there is strongly recommended.
Warning
The Unix timestamp that this function returns does not contain information about time zones. In order to do calculations with date/time information, you should use the more capable DateTimeImmutable.
Each parameter of this function uses the default time zone unless a time zone is specified in that parameter. Be careful not to use different time zones in each parameter unless that is intended. See date_default_timezone_get[] on the various ways to define the default time zone.
Parameters
datetime
A date/time string. Valid formats are explained in Date and Time Formats.
baseTimestamp
The timestamp which is used as a base for the calculation of relative dates.
Return Values
Returns a timestamp on success, false
otherwise.
Errors/Exceptions
Every call to a date/time
function will generate a E_WARNING
if the time zone is not valid. See also date_default_timezone_set[]
Changelog
8.0.0 | baseTimestamp is nullable now.
|
Examples
Example #1 A strtotime[] example
Example #2 Checking for failure
Notes
Note:
"Relative" date in this case also means that if a particular component of the date/time stamp is not provided, it will be taken verbatim from the
baseTimestamp
. That is,strtotime['February']
, if run on the 31st of May 2022, will be interpreted as31 February 2022
, which will overflow into a timestamp on3 March
. [In a leap year, it would be2 March
.] Usingstrtotime['1 February']
orstrtotime['first day of February']
would avoid that problem.
Note:
If the number of the year is specified in a two digit format, the values between 00-69 are mapped to 2000-2069 and 70-99 to 1970-1999. See the notes below for possible differences on 32bit systems [possible dates might end on 2038-01-19 03:14:07].
Note:
The valid range of a timestamp is typically from Fri, 13 Dec 1901 20:45:54 UTC to Tue, 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 UTC. [These are the dates that correspond to the minimum and maximum values for a 32-bit signed integer.]
For 64-bit versions of PHP, the valid range of a timestamp is effectively infinite, as 64 bits can represent approximately 293 billion years in either direction.
Note:
Using this function for mathematical operations is not advisable. It is better to use DateTime::add[] and DateTime::sub[].
See Also
- DateTimeImmutable
- DateTimeImmutable::createFromFormat[] - Parses a time string according to a specified format
- Date and Time Formats
- checkdate[] - Validate a Gregorian date
- strptime[] - Parse a time/date generated with strftime
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