PHP strtotime() function
Example
Parse English text date and time into Unix timestamp:
<?php
echo(strtotime("now") . "<br>");
echo(strtotime("15 October 1980") . "<br>");
echo(strtotime("+5 hours") . "<br>");
echo(strtotime("+1 week") . "<br>");
echo(strtotime("+1 week 3 days 7 hours 5 seconds") . "<br>");
echo(strtotime("next Monday") . "<br>");
echo(strtotime("last Sunday"));
?>
Definition and Usage
The strtotime() function parses any English text description of a date or time into a Unix timestamp (the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 00:00:00 GMT).
Note:If the year is represented using a two-digit format, the value 0-69 will map to 2000-2069, and the value 70-100 will map to 1970-2000.
Note:Please note the date format m/d/y or d-m-y. If the separator is a slash (/), use the American m/d/y format. If the separator is a hyphen (-) or a dot (.), use the European d-m-y format. To avoid potential errors, you should use the YYYY-MM-DD format or use the date_create_from_format() function as much as possible.
Syntax
strtotime(time,now);
| Parameters | Description |
|---|---|
| time | Required. Specifies the date/time string. |
| now | Optional. Specifies the timestamp to be used for the calculation of the return value. If this parameter is omitted, the current time is used. |
Technical Details
| Return Value: | Returns a timestamp if successful, returns FALSE if failed. |
|---|---|
| PHP Version: | 4+ |
Update Log:
| 5.3.0: | Now relative time formats, such as this week, last week, the previous week, the next week, specify that a week starts from Monday to Sunday, not using the 7 days before and after the current date/time. |
| 5.3.0 | Before PHP 5.3.0, 24:00 was not a valid format, and strtotime() would return FALSE. |
| 5.2.7 | In previous versions, if a specific date in a month was requested and that date was the first day of the month, it would incorrectly add a week to the returned timestamp, which has now been corrected. |
| 5.1.0 | Returns FALSE if the operation fails (in previous versions it would return -1), and adds E_STRICT and E_NOTICE timezone errors. |
| 5.0.2 | Now the calculation of "now" and other relative time is based on the current time, not on the time of midnight today. |
| 5.0.0 | Microseconds are allowed (but the microsecond value is usually ignored). |
| 4.4.0 | Before PHP 4.4, "next" was incorrectly calculated as +2. The usual solution is to use "+1". |
