PHP date formatting ass backwards Sep16 '05

Why is PHP date formatting so "ass-backwards?"

I love the simplicity of the PHP programming language - but when it comes to dates and times, things are very long-winded.

All I want to do is format an SQL date/time string, such as:

2005-09-16 07:33:41

This date/time string is how all date/time strings are stored in MySQL database tables. This is the default order:

YEAR-MONTH-DAY hour:minute:second.

Sure, I could just leave the date/time like that, but it’s much more intuitive to format the date/time string, so it doesn’t look so much like "computer code." Also, some file types (XML, for example) only accept certain date/time formats, in order to be parsed correctly.

Here are some different ways to format the date/time string:

Friday, September 16, 2005 - 7:33 AM

9/16/05, 7:33 AM CST

16 Sep 05, 7:33 AM

The possibilities are only limited to the imagination.

Except... PHP makes it very difficult to go from "computer date/time" to "intuitive date/time."

For example, PHP has a date() function, which formats the date/time string - but only for the current date/time.

What I need to do is format a specified date/time - for blog posts, comments, etc. This shouldn’t be that complicated.

That PHP date() function can format a specified date/time, but only with a major "work-around," which includes the use of another function - mktime(), which takes "ass-backward" parameters.

mktime() asks you to include (in this order) the following values: hour, minute, second, month, day, year.

So, a call to the mktime() function could look like this:

mktime(07, 33, 41, 09, 16, 2005);

This information has to be extracted from the SQL date/time value: 2005-09-16 07:33:41.

Also, the mktime() function won’t accept those trailing zeros - as in 09, or 07. They have to be 9, or 7.

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This rant is brought to you by an entire day wasted, trying to complete a simple task.

Categories: PHP , Rants

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$formattedDate = date("l, jS F Y", strtotime($dateValue)); ... Read more.

Dude, this is simple to do! Just do it with SQL and not PHP SELECT DATEFORMAT(postdate, '%a %M %D, %Y') as post_date ... Read more.

I used this string posted by Someone, and it worked perfect: $formattedDate = date("l, jS F Y", strtotime($dateValue)); Thanks! ... Read more.

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