How to convert time like 2 pm or 3 am to HH:MM:SS format in php?

Question

How can i convert times like 2 pm or 3 am to HH:MM:SS format in php?

Thats all what my question is.

Regards Zeeshan

Answer 1

Like this:

$date = '2pm';
echo date('H:i:s', strtotime($date));

Result:

14:00:00

And:

$date = '2am';
echo date('H:i:s', strtotime($date));

Result:

02:00:00

More Info:

• date
• strtotime

Update:

To convert it back:

$date = '14:00:00';
echo date('HA', strtotime($date));

Result:

14PM

Answer 2

(this should be a comment, but it's too long)

The reason Sarfraz's solution is incomplete is because it doesn't account for DST transaitions. During DST transitions, some hours may not exist.

Consider the timezone is Europe/Lisbon and we're in March 28th 2010, when DST kicked in.

When we hit 1am, we change from UTC+0 to UTC+1, i.e., we skip 1 hour. Example:

date_default_timezone_set("Europe/Lisbon");
$date = '2010-03-28 1am';
$date2 = '2010-03-28 1:30am';
echo date('H:i:s', strtotime($date)),"\n";
echo date('H:i:s', strtotime($date2)),"\n";

gives

02:00:00
02:30:00

Therefore, Sarfraz solution will fail unless when you say you want to convert 1am to 01:00, these times always refer to the current day in the server's timezone.