How to format date from timestamp in PHP?

Question

I have a database row whose type is "timestamp". It automatically populates each time a new record has been added with the time of that record's insertion. Right now for one of the records it holds the value:

2010-06-19 18:40:51

I tried to turn this in to a more user friendly format by:

$timeStamp = $row['date'];
$timeStamp = date( "m/d/Y", $timeStamp);

But it returns this:

12/31/1969

I read somewhere that the date function can only be used on unix timestamps, perhaps what I have in my database isn't a proper timestamp and I need to convert it to one first before using the date function on it (?). What is the solution?

Answer 1

Use strtotime function:

$timeStamp = $row['date'];
$timeStamp = date( "m/d/Y", strtotime($timeStamp));

For the date from your example 2010-06-19 18:40:51, it would return:

06/19/2010

The timestamp field updates automatically but you can disable that behavior by changing it to DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP otherwise it will auto update. From the manual:

In a CREATE TABLE statement, the first TIMESTAMP column can be declared in any of the following ways:

With both DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP and ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP clauses, the column has the current timestamp for its default value, and is automatically updated.

With neither DEFAULT nor ON UPDATE clauses, it is the same as DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP.

With a DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP clause and no ON UPDATE clause, the column has the current timestamp for its default value but is not automatically updated.

Answer 2

strtotime($timeStamp) (string to time) is what you want to convert into a unix timestamp.

Then you can use the date on that, so something like date( "m/d/Y", strtotime($timeStamp) )

http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php

Answer 3

SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP(sql_row_with_timestamp) AS some_much_more_readable_name FROM your_table should do the trick.