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strtotime

(PHP 3 >= 3.0.12, PHP 4, PHP 5)

strtotime -- Parse about any English textual datetime description into a Unix timestamp

Description

int strtotime ( string time [, int now] )

The function expects to be given a string containing a US English date format and will try to parse that format into a Unix timestamp (the number of seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT), relative to the timestamp given in now, or the current time if none is supplied.

This function will use the TZ environment variable (if available) to calculate the timestamp. Since PHP 5.1.0 there are easier ways to define the timezone that is used across all date/time functions. That process is explained in the date_default_timezone_get() function page.

Note: If the number of the year is specified in a two digit format, the values between 0-69 are mapped to 2000-2069 and 70-100 to 1970-2000.

Parameters

time

The string to parse, according to the GNU Date Input Formats syntax. Before PHP 5.0, microseconds weren't allowed in the time, since PHP 5.0 they are allowed but ignored.

now

The timestamp used to calculate the returned value.

Return Values

Returns a timestamp on success, FALSE otherwise. Previous to PHP 5.1.0, this function would return -1 on failure.

Errors/Exceptions

Every call to a date/time function will generate a E_NOTICE if the time zone is not valid, and/or a E_STRICT message if using the system settings or the TZ environment variable. See also date_default_timezone_set()

ChangeLog

VersionDescription
5.1.0 It now returns FALSE on failure, instead of -1.
5.1.0

Now issues the E_STRICT and E_NOTICE time zone errors.

Examples

Example 1. A strtotime() example

<?php
echo strtotime("now"), "\n";
echo strtotime("10 September 2000"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 day"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds"), "\n";
echo strtotime("next Thursday"), "\n";
echo strtotime("last Monday"), "\n";
?>

Example 2. Checking for failure

<?php
$str = 'Not Good';

// previous to PHP 5.1.0 you would compare with -1, instead of false
if (($timestamp = strtotime($str)) === false) {
    echo "The string ($str) is bogus";
} else {
    echo "$str == " . date('l dS of F Y h:i:s A', $timestamp);
}
?>

Notes

Warning

In PHP 5 up to 5.0.2, "now" and other relative times are wrongly computed from today's midnight. It differs from other versions where it is correctly computed from current time.

Warning

In PHP versions prior to 4.4, "next" is incorrectly computed as +2. A typical solution to this is to use "+1".

Note: The valid range of a timestamp is typically from Fri, 13 Dec 1901 20:45:54 GMT to Tue, 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 GMT. (These are the dates that correspond to the minimum and maximum values for a 32-bit signed integer.) Additionally, not all platforms support negative timestamps, therefore your date range may be limited to no earlier than the Unix epoch. This means that e.g. dates prior to Jan 1, 1970 will not work on Windows, some Linux distributions, and a few other operating systems. PHP 5.1.0 and newer versions overcome this limitation though.

See Also

strptime()

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