Question

I am trying to come up with a way to use PHP to convert any date that is in a format below, to a unix timestamp. I was wondering if someone can help me accomplish this.

This is what I tried, which didn’t work:

   $expiration_date = '11/22/12';

   $timestamp = strtotime(date("m/d/y", $expiration_date));     

Answer 1

You don’t need the date() part.

Just do this:

$expires = '11/22/12';
$unix = strtotime($expires);

http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php

The problem with your example is you’re passing a string to the date() function.
The date() function requires a format string e.g. 'm/d/y' and then the time as an int value.
You’re passing it a string so it doesn’t work.

date(): http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php