Question

I’m trying to work out what format this date is in!

  'date' => int 1342640973

Date today is 18.07.2012

I got it from the get_file_info function in the CI File Helper.

Answer 1

It’s a unix timestamp!

The value you have represent a date/time in seconds since the first of January 1970 (in UTC), it’s often referred to as a "unix timestamp" because of it’s origin.

Handling this time representation is easily done in PHP, there are native functions made to convert back and to the format.

---

time () will return the current time in the format specified (unix timestamp), to convert this into a readable string you can use date with the appropriate format-string, as in the below example:

$unix_timestamp = 1342640973;
$now_utimestamp = time (); 

print_r (
  array (
    date ("Y-m-d G:i:s", $unix_timestamp),
    date ("Y-m-d G:i:s", $now_utimestamp)
  )
);

^{output on my system:}

Array
(
    [0] => 2012-07-18 21:49:33
    [1] => 2012-07-18 22:18:43
)

---

Unless you have told PHP which timezone it’s currently in (using php.ini or equivalent) you’ll need to specify this using the function date_default_timezone_set(), passing it the value of date_default_timezone_get() will try to set it according to your system preferences.

If it’s unable to find a correct match UTC will be used per default.