Problem displaying TIMESTAMP to people

Snapple · #1 13-Jun-2005, 16:00

Hello again. My project is coming along fine but now I have one very simple problem. I have a timestamp set to $regtime that, for this example, is 20050613152659 . Obviously I don't want to display it like that so I did this PHP command...
$regtime = date("l M dS, Y, H:i:s",$regtime);
and it comes out as
Monday Jan 18th, 2038, 21:14:07
(it should say something like Tuesday June 13th, 2005, (hour:min:sec))

Now I'm going to work on that cron job

Also I would like to take this space to say thank you for all of your help, this forum has made my php experiance a lot smoother.

JdS · #2 13-Jun-2005, 22:39

Hello Snapple,

The second parameter in the PHP date() function is expecting a unix timestamp number while you have been supplying it with a MySQL timestamp value. This is why the function returns an invalid date.

There are quite a few ways to do what you want to do but I will only show you 2 and then it simply boils down to what you will prefer to do.

One way is to format the date (data) on the fly, in the SQL query itself. Assuming the column name for the date in the database table is `regtime` for example, you could rewrite the query to something like this:

Code:

SELECT *, DATE_FORMAT(`regtime`, '%W %M %D, %Y, %H:%i:%s') AS `regtimef`
FROM `members`
WHERE `id` = 1

In your PHP script, you will just refer to $row['regtimef'] to show the date which is already formatted the way you want it displayed on a web page.

The second way is for you to use PHP's own strtotime() function to convert the MySQL timestamp into a Unix timestamp value.

PHP Code:


<?php

// assume you have just queried the database and have the MYSQL timestamp 
// stored inside the variable: $regtime which is for example, "20050614091407"

$regtime  =  strtotime( $regtime ); // convert to UNIX timestamp
$regtime  =  date( "l M dS, Y, H:i:s", $regtime );  // now regtime is e.g. "Tuesday June 14th, 2005, 09:14:07"

?>

Snapple · #3 14-Jun-2005, 09:55

Hello JdS,
Something is wrong

strtotime($regtime) changes it to -1 so the time is displayed as "Wednesday Dec 31st, 1969, 17:59:59". I even tried strtotime(20050613152659) and got the same result. So I did a little research on converting to Unix timestamp and found a code that works for me.

PHP Code:


//from timestamp to unix
$regtime='20050613152659';
$year=substr($regtime,0,4);
    $month=substr($regtime,4,2);
    $day=substr($regtime,6,2);
    $hour=substr($regtime,8,2);
    $minute=substr($regtime,10,2);
    $second=substr($regtime,12,2);
    $regtime=mktime($hour,$minute,$second,$month,$day,$year);
    $regtime  =  date( "l M dS, Y, H:i:s", $regtime ); //displays Monday Jun 13th, 2005, 15:26:59
//end

thank you again.

JdS · #4 14-Jun-2005, 10:14

Oh really? I am sorry, I didn't verify my code example before posting it

I took for granted that the strtotime() function is quite an intelligent function :-P

That "fix" you pasted in your last reply looks really convoluted...

I suggest that you add this to your SQL statement everytime you are working with MySQL timestamps then:

Code:

SELECT *, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(`regtime`) AS `regtimeUTS`
FROM `members`
WHERE `id` = 1

That way you will always have the extra $row['regtimeUTS'] in UNIX timestamp format (to do what you will with it in the PHP date() function).

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