CSS, JavaScript and XHTML Explained

ISO 8601 date in PHP August 1, 2007

Converting ISO 8601 date string in PHP

JavaScript Date Object explained how to convert ISO 8601 dates in Javascript. Thanks to Ryan Kennedy, we have a function to convert ISO 8601 dates in PHP.

This is how you can call the function:

$theDateFormattedMyWay = date("F j, Y", parse_datetime($ISO8601_formate_date]));

For other possible formats, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php.

You need to then include the parse_datetime function in your code. Hopefully the next version of PHP will include this, or something similar

function parse_datetime($datetime) {
     $currentTime = time();
     $offset = date("Z", $currentTime);

     $matches = array();

     // Check to see if we're dealing with a UTC dateTime (ends in 'Z')
     // or if there's an offset specified (ends in '[+-]hh:mm').
     if(preg_match("/^(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}T\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2})([+-])(\d{2}):(\d{2})$/",
          $datetime, $matches) === 1) {
     	// Offset specified.
     	$dateString = $matches[1];

     	// Calculate the custom offset.
     	$customOffset = $matches[3] * 60 * 60;
     	$customOffset += $matches[4] * 60;

     	// Invert the custom offset as necessary.
	if($matches[2] == "+") {
     		$customOffset = -1 * $customOffset;
     	}

     	// Add the custom offset to the UTC offset to get the offset
     	// from the local timezone.
     	$offset += $customOffset;
     }
     else if(preg_match("/^(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}T\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2})Z$/",
           $datetime, $matches) === 1) {
     	// Using the UTC timezone.
     	$dateString = $matches[1];
     }

     // Parse the date and time portion of the string.
     $datetimeArray = strptime($dateString, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%");

     // Generate the UNIX time. Note that this will be in the wrong timezone.
     $time = mktime($datetimeArray['tm_hour'],
     		$datetimeArray['tm_min'],
     		$datetimeArray['tm_sec'],
     		$datetimeArray['tm_mon'] + 1,
		$datetimeArray['tm_mday'] ,
     		$datetimeArray['tm_year'] + 1900);

      // Return the calculated UNIX time from above along with the offset
      // necessary to correct for the timezone specified.
      return $time + $offset;
}