Question

I have problem with date function in php. If I supply string in format “d.m.y” for example “01.01.01” it gets rendered as todays date which means that php gets confused.

I found:

Note:

The “Day, month and two digit year, with dots or tabs” format (dd [.\t] mm “.” yy)
only works for the year values 61 (inclusive) to 99
(inclusive) – outside those years the time format “HH [.:] MM [.:] SS” has
precedence.

on: php.net site

How to override this behavior?

I know of date_create_from_format function which would work fine if I knew input will always be in format “d.m.y”, but it won’t.

UPDATE 1:

Code

$date = new DateTime('01.01.01');
echo $date->format('Y-m-d');

outputs 2010-10-19 and I wanted 2001-01-01.

Answer 1

function getDateFromString( $str )
{
    $date = DateTime::createFromFormat( 'd.m.y', $str );
    if ( $date !== false )
        return $date->getTimestamp();

    // you can try other common formats here
    // ...

    // otherwise just parse whatever there is
    return strtotime( $str );
}

echo date( 'd.m.Y H:i', getDateFromString( '01.01.01' ) ); // 01.01.2001 20:14

Edit

To adjust it a bit more to get your exact output:

function getDateTimeFromString( $str )
{
    $date = DateTime::createFromFormat( 'd.m.y', $str );
    if ( $date !== false )
        return $date;

    // you can try other common formats here
    // ...

    // otherwise just parse whatever there is
    return new DateTime( $str );
}

$date = getDateTimeFromString( '01.01.01' );
echo $date->format( 'Y-m-d' ); // 2001-01-01