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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-15T18:38:05+00:00

I am encountering a slightly frustrating problem and I have a feeling there is

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I am encountering a slightly frustrating problem and I have a feeling there is a simple solution to it. When I pass the same UNIX timestamp to the PHP date and MySQL FROM_UNIXTIME methods they are returning two very different dates. I would like to return a value from MySQL that matches the one returned by PHP.

Here is the code I am currently using along with it’s output. The timestamp provided represents the date Tue, 01 Jan 2013 (01/01/2013). Also for reference, here are the format values.

MySQL Format

  • %j = Day of year (001..366).
  • %m = Month, numeric (00..12).
  • %y = Year, numeric (two digits).

PHP Format

  • z = The day of the year starting from 0 (0 through 365).
  • m = Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros (01 through 12).
  • y = A two digit representation of a year (Examples: 99 or 03).

MySQL Query

SELECT FROM_UNIXTIME(1357018200, '%j-%m-%y');
-> 366-12-12

PHP Code

echo date('z-m-y', 1357018200);
-> 0-01-13

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time. 🙂

Other Information

  • MySQL Version: 5.5.23
  • MySQL system_time_zone: CDT
  • MySQL time_zone: SYSTEM
  • PHP date_default_timezone_get: America/Chicago (CDT)
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Your PHP and MySQL aren’t agreeing on the time. Using the time converter at:

    http://www.4webhelp.net/us/timestamp.php?action=stamp&stamp=1357018200&timezone=-6

    gives the result “Monday, December 31st 2012, 23:30:00 (GMT -6)” so your PHP is giving the wrong result. Although you’ve given the timezone that PHP is running in, can you double check by running:

    date_default_timezone_set ("America/Chicago");
echo date('z-m-y', 1357018200)."\r\n";

    Which should give “365-12-12”.

    I guess it’s possible either something is setting the timezone incorrectly somewhere else or possibly that “America/Chicago (CDT)” is an old setting in your php.ini file from a previous version of PHP.

    Looking at the list of allowed timezone values from http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.america.php there is no “America/Chicago (CDT)” listed, so you should figure out where it’s getting set to that bogus value as it may cause other issues.

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