what is the best method to translate strings to mysql dates?

Question

What is the best way in php to take the following string mm[some char]dd[some char]yyyy and translate it to yyyymmdd? I will probably want in the future, according to local do the same with dd[some char]mm[some char]yyyy.
If there is a way that already uses the Zend Framework API, the better

Answer 1

<?php
$str = '08-24-1989'; // can be in any recognizable date format.    
$new_str = date('Ymd', strtotime($str)); // produces "20090824".
?>

You can replace Ymd in the second statement above with any date format characters found here.

If you're looking to use Zend's Zend_Date framework, check out some examples and documentation here. Quite frankly though, the PHP functions are a lot simpler and easier to use in your case.

Answer 2

date('Ymd', strtotime($time));

Strtotime is absolutely the best tool to translate almost any time format into a standard one that you can then use Date to put into the format you want.

Because you question title says MySQL Dates, this is the string format that mysql uses.

date('Y-m-d h:i:s', strtotime($time));

Answer 3

Unless [some char] varies , use the mysql str_to_date function, e.g. STR_TO_DATE('12|23|2009','%m|%d|%Y');

Answer 4

I would absolutely use TIMESTAMP for any date storage. It's incredibly easy to handle time differences (like SELECT ... WHERE date BETWEEN 2138728753 AND 376251237) and can be translated to any locale pretty easily :)