Question

In the user interface, i have a text field to enter date in dd/mm/yyyy format and there is another textbox for time in hh:mm format and another dropdown box to specify am or pm. All these three fields will let the user to enter the date,time and am/pm manually. I prefered to use this primitive method as per the requirement of the project.

Now i want all these values to be added in mysql in timestamp format to make it easier to fetch and manipulate. Please suggest me how can i achieve this.

<?
$date = '21'.'/'.'11'.'/'.'2011';
$time = '12'.':'.'00';
$ampm = "am";
$dt = DateTime::createFromFormat(
    'd/m/Y h:i a',
 sprintf('%s %s %s', $date, $time, $ampm),
   new DateTimeZone('Country/Region'));



$mysqlDateString = $dt->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');


?>

Answer 1

Use mktime in conjunction with the correct format to date by sending your user input to explode, like so:

$date = '22/11/2011'; $date_pieces = explode( '/', $date);
$time = '08:35'; $time_pieces = explode( ':', $time);
$am_pm = 'PM';

$mysql_timestamp = date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s', mktime( 
    $time_pieces[0] + ( $am_pm == 'AM' ? -12 : 12), // Hour - Convert AM/PM to 24-hr format
    $time_pieces[1], // Minute
    0, // Second
    $date_pieces[1], // Month
    $date_pieces[0], // Day
    $date_pieces[2])); // year

Now $mysql_timestamp is a valid entry for a datetime column.

If you need a UNIX timestamp, just remove the call to date, like so:

$unix_timestamp = mktime( 
    $time_pieces[0] + ( $am_pm == 'AM' ? -12 : 12), // Hour - Convert AM/PM to 24-hr format
    $time_pieces[1], // Minute
    0, // Second
    $date_pieces[1], // Month
    $date_pieces[0], // Day
    $date_pieces[2]);

Demo

Edit: As per Phil’s comments below, be sure to set a correct timezone with date_default_timezone_set.