RSS feed publish date-time (GMT) to Unix timestamp format using PHP

Question

How do convert RSS feed publish date-time (GMT) to Unix timestamp using PHP?

I need to store the date into my table in a TIMESTAMP data type column.

Answer 1

From MySQL Manual:

TIMESTAMP columns are displayed in the same format as DATETIME columns. In other words, the display width is fixed at 19 characters, and the format is 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'.

The RSS 2.0 specification states that:

All date-times in RSS conform to the Date and Time Specification of RFC 822, with the exception that the year may be expressed with two characters or four characters (four preferred).

---

So if we have the following RSS date:

$timeRSS = 'Sat, 07 Sep 2002 09:42:31 GMT'; // RFC 822

We need to do the following to convert it to MySQL TIMESTAMP format:

date_default_timezone_set('GMT'); // make sure we are using the same timezone
date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime($timeRSS)); // 2002-09-07 09:42:31

Answer 2

Would it be an option to use the PHP functions to generate a Unix Timestamp (ie seconds since Unix Epoch) and then let MySQL handle it from there?

PHP: - PHP Documentation

$timestamp = strtotime( 'Sat, 07 Sep 2002 09:42:31 GMT' ); // = 1031391751

MySQL: - MySQL Documentation

... `timestamp` = FROM_UNIXTIME( 1031391751 ) ...