Question

Given the following timestring:

$str = '2000-11-29';

$php_date = getdate( $str );
echo '<pre>';
print_r ($php_date);
echo '</pre>';

How to get the year/month/day in PHP?

[seconds] => 20
[minutes] => 33
[hours] => 18
[mday] => 31
[wday] => 3
[mon] => 12
[year] => 1969
[yday] => 364
[weekday] => Wednesday
[month] => December
[0] => 2000

I don’t know why I get 1969 for year.

Thank you

Answer 1

You can use strtotime to parse a time string, and pass the resulting timestamp to getdate (or use date to format your time).

$str = '2000-11-29';

if (($timestamp = strtotime($str)) !== false)
{
  $php_date = getdate($timestamp);
  // or if you want to output a date in year/month/day format:
  $date = date("Y/m/d", $timestamp); // see the date manual page for format options      
}
else
{
  echo 'invalid timestamp!';
}

Note that strtotime will return false if the time string is invalid or can’t be parsed. When the timestamp you’re trying to parse is invalid, you end up with the 1969-12-31 date you encountered before.