PHP Parse Date String

Question

If I've got a date string:

$date = "08/20/2009";

And I want to separate each part of the date:

$m = "08";
$d = "20";
$y = "2009";

How would I do so?

Is there a special date function I should be using? Or something else?

Thanks!

Answer 1

explode will do the trick for that:

$pieces = explode("/", $date);
$d = $pieces[1];
$m = $pieces[0];
$y = $pieces[2];

Alternatively, you could do it in one line (see comments - thanks Lucky):

list($m, $d, $y) = explode("/", $date);

Answer 2

One way would be to do this:

$time = strtotime($date);
$m = date('m', $time);
$d = date('d', $time);
$y = date('Y', $time);

Answer 3

Is it always like that? Or will it be in any sort of file format?

Try strtotime.

Something like:

if(($iTime = strtotime($strDate))!==false)
{
 echo date('m', $iTime);
 echo date('d', $iTime);
 echo date('y', $iTime);
}

Answer 4

Dominic's answer is good, but IF the date is ALWAYS in the same format you could use this:

$m = substr($date,0,2);
$d = substr($date,3,2);
$y = substr($date,-4);

and not have to use an array or explode

Bill H

Answer 5

how about this:

list($m, $d, $y) = explode("/", $date);

A quick one liner.