Question

What is the best way in php to take the following string mm[some char]dd[some char]yyyy and translate it to yyyymmdd?
I will probably want in the future, according to local do the same with dd[some char]mm[some char]yyyy.
If there is a way that already uses the Zend Framework API, the better

Answer 1

<?php
$str = '08-24-1989'; // can be in any recognizable date format.    
$new_str = date('Ymd', strtotime($str)); // produces "20090824".
?>

You can replace Ymd in the second statement above with any date format characters found here.

If you’re looking to use Zend’s Zend_Date framework, check out some examples and documentation here. Quite frankly though, the PHP functions are a lot simpler and easier to use in your case.