Coldfusion equiv of PHP strtotime() ?

Question

I'm relatively new to CF / Flex3 and I've been tasked with making mock applications in order to get my knowledge of the 2 languages up.

I'm creating an application where I require data back 1 week (strtotime equiv '-1 week').

So that the result is always 1 weeks worth.

Whats the comparable equivalent if any for coldfusion? If none, how would I accomplish this task? Just curious, I've searched but cannot find anything yet on this topic.

How I solved this (get data from 'last friday'):

<cfset lastweek = dateAdd("d", -(DayOfWeek(now()) + 1), now()) />

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

Answer 1

I don't know of a way in coldfusion (not natively anyway) that will take a textual representation of time and do a conversion. A few google searches also did not turn up anything. It could be written but would not be a simple undertaking.

That said, if you want to get a date 1 week back, you could do something like this using the dateadd() function:

<cfset variables.lastweek = dateAdd("w",-1,now()) />

or

<cfset variables.lastweek = dateAdd("d",-7,now()) />

Of course you can substitute now() out for any timestamp or date.

Update:

Remember that because CF is java, you can use any java classes to help you on your way too. It doesn't look like there is a cut and dry equivallent even in java, but these relevant topics may help you on your way:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1236678/phps-strtotime-in-java

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1268174/phps-strtotime-in-java

Answer 2

Maybe ParseDateTime will do the job?