Converting Unix Timestamp to a more user-friendly datetime format

Question

I have a javascript datetimepicker that I downloaded online which I use to select a start time and end time of a booking.

However, when I select a date and time it is displayed in this format in the input box - 03/12/2012 04:00 pm, as a string I believe.

What I've done so far is use the strtotime function which is successfully converting the times into unix timestamps so they can be compared.

However, for storing the start and end times in my mysql database and displaying them to the user I need the date and time to be displayed in a more user friendly and readable datetime format such as 03/12/2012 04:00 or 03/12/2012 04:00:00.

Does anybody know if this is possible and if so how to do it?

Thank you!

Shiplu Mokaddim · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-11 15:01:06Z

1

You can use this workflow.

Convert 03/12/2012 04:00 to timestamp by strtotime()

Convert timestamp to MySQL format by date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $timestamp); or using DateTime

$dt = new DateTime();
$dt->setTimeStamp($timestamp);
$mysql_date = $dt->format("Y-m-d H:i:s");

When you retrieve the date from mysql parse it again with strtotime()

Echo it back to HTML/JS as DateTime::format("d/m/Y h:i:s a");

$dt = new DateTime($mysql_date);
$user_friendly_date = $dt->format("d/m/Y h:i:s a");

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edited Mar 11, 2012 at 15:01

answered Mar 11, 2012 at 14:54

Shiplu Mokaddim

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Shiplu Mokaddim Over a year ago

If you believe its helpful, why not up-vote so that it can stay on top

Ben · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-11 14:46:59Z

0

The MySQL database also supports storing datetime formats, e.g. 2012-03-11 23:44:15. If you store them as datetime they can also be easily compared against other dates. How about that?

answered Mar 11, 2012 at 14:46

Ben

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