Question

I have a MYSQL table column of type timestamp and using CURRENT_TIMESTAMP as default when a new record is added.

The date field in my database table looks like this 2011-08-16 12:09:25 How is it possible to format that into MM/DD/YY to display on my site? I tried some functions from the date helper but I get errors.

note: I’m trying to figure out how to use Codeigniter functions for this, if possible.

In the CI manual there are examples with $timestamp = '1140153693'; but my database timestamp is a different format and get errors.

Answer 1

To display a timestamp, just use the PHP Date class. But since MySQL outputs timestamps as a string not an INT, you’ll have to first convert the timestamp string to a timestamp INT using PHP’s strtotime function. The code looks like this:

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

Date
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

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