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Answer 1

+7 A:

strtotime("dateString"); gets it into the native PHP date format, then you can work with the date() function to get it printed out how you'd like it.

Alex Mcp 2010-04-09 22:41:21

That sounds good thanks, $time = strtotime($phrase->created_at); echo $time;is giving me it like this... 1270817634. How do I use the date() function with that?

Chris Armstrong 2010-04-09 22:48:40

Ah wait, got it working. date("jS F Y", $time) gives me 9th April 2010.Thanks!

Chris Armstrong 2010-04-09 22:54:24

Yeah, the date parsing in PHP is pretty well formed. Note that strtotime will accept ALMOST anything you throw into it. It's expensive but quite powerful.

Alex Mcp 2010-04-09 22:57:01

Answer 2

+1 A:

Javascript. As @Andy pointed out, is going to be a bitch when it comes to IE. So it's best to reply on a library that does it consistently. DateJS seems like a nice library.

Once the library is added, you would parse and format it as:

var date = Date.parse("Fri Apr 09 12:53:54 +0000 2010");
var formatted = date.toString("dd-MM-yyyy");

In PHP you can use the date functions or the DateTime class to do the same (available since PHP 5.2.0):

$date = new DateTime("Fri Apr 09 12:53:54 +0000 2010");
echo $date->format("d-m-Y"); // 09-04-2010

Anurag 2010-04-09 22:42:04

This gives `NaN` in Internet Explorer, although it works in Chrome. IE struggles with the `+0000`.

Andy E 2010-04-09 22:45:58

thanks for the tip Andy. it's best to go server side, or use a date parsing library such a datejs

Anurag 2010-04-09 22:48:25

There's also a good jQuery PHPDate library available (via google)

Alex Mcp 2010-04-09 22:58:34

PHPDate looks like a nice plugin for date handling. Like the way how they setup the "Try me" demos for different formats on the front page.

Anurag 2010-04-09 23:06:47

Answer 3

+2 A:

JavaScript can parse that date if you remove the +0000 from the string:

var dStr = "Fri Apr 09 12:53:54 +0000 2010";
dStr = dStr.replace("+0000 ", "");
var d = new Date(dStr);

Chrome -- and I suspect some other non IE browsers -- can actually parse it with the +0000 present in the string, but you may as well remove it for interoperability.

PHP can parse the date with strtotime:

strtotime("Fri Apr 09 12:53:54 +0000 2010");

Andy E 2010-04-09 22:44:36

thanks, I went with the strtotime option. However your Javascript example just answered another question I had, thanks!

Chris Armstrong 2010-04-09 22:56:02

However, the original date string is probably in UTC (and hence the +0000). `new Date()` will parse it in the local time zone.

Ates Goral 2010-05-04 06:07:50

This gets parsed in the correct time zone: `dStr = dStr.replace("+0000 ", "") + " GMT";`

Ates Goral 2010-05-04 06:20:54

@Ates Goral: Thanks for your corrections, I had forgotten that ECMAScript implementations parse dates in the local timezone if one is omitted.

Andy E 2010-05-04 08:26:47

@Andy E's head: We're not quite done yet :( Safari doesn't like this but it works fine on IE, FF, Opera and Chrome.

Ates Goral 2010-05-04 14:27:03

@Ates Goral: That seems very odd, given that both Safari and Chrome use the same engine (WebKit). Can Safari parse it with the `+0000` in? If it works OK like that then the solution would be to try and create the `Date()` before the replace and fall back to the str replace if that date is NaN.

Andy E 2010-05-04 14:46:44

I agree; that's weird. Doing things more explicitly seems to be the only way... I've posted my approach as a separate answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2611415/parsing-twitter-api-datestamp/2766516#2766516

Ates Goral 2010-05-04 15:14:55

@Andy E's head: Well Safari and Chrome both use WebKit for rendering HTML but Safari uses SquirrelFish/Nitro and Chrome uses V8 for executing Javascript. That should be the reason for the difference in behaviour.

paracycle 2010-05-04 15:52:05

@paracycle: I wasn't aware of that (I thought V8 was part of WebKit), thanks for clarifying. @Ates Goral: +1 for your answer.

Andy E 2010-05-04 17:22:37

Answer 4

+7 A:

Cross-browser, time-zone-aware parsing via JavaScript:

var s = "Fri Apr 09 12:53:54 +0000 2010";

var date = new Date(
    s.replace(/^\w+ (\w+) (\d+) ([\d:]+) \+0000 (\d+)$/,
        "$1 $2 $4 $3 UTC"));

Tested on IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera.

Ates Goral 2010-05-04 15:11:53

+1 for that :-)

Andy E 2010-05-04 17:21:40

very good mate =)

ludicco 2010-07-12 23:03:28

Great answer. Why did Twitter settle on this horrible date format?

brad 2010-08-11 13:30:57

I'm wondering the same thing too...

Ates Goral 2010-08-11 14:41:52

Answer 5

A:

Hi,

I used this script to format the date in PHP:

$date = new DateTime("Fri Apr 09 12:53:54 +0000 2010"); echo $date->format("d-m-Y"); // 09-04-2010

Now, how can I get the time-zone do Brazil from this example? Thank you.

Tiago 2010-05-22 22:42:51

Answer 6

A:

Trying to do a similar thing and stumbled in here. Funny thing is, the datestamp I'm getting from Twitter is not Fri 27 Aug 2010 22:00:07 +0000 its Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:00:07 +0000

Are Twitter really stupid enough to put random commas into their formatted dates? Nothing would surprise me to be honest!!!

jamiet 2010-08-30 14:53:07

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