Convert date format yyyy-mm-dd to dd-mm-yyyy

Use strtotime() and date():

$originalDate = "2010-03-21";
$newDate = date("d-m-Y", strtotime($originalDate));

(see strtotime and date docs on the PHP site).

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PHP: Convert date to timestamp

PHP's strtotime() gives

$timestamp = strtotime('22-09-2008');

Which does work with the Supported Date and Time Formats Docs.

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How to: convert one date format to another (PHP)

The second parameter to date() needs to be a proper timestamp (seconds since January 1, 1970). You are passing a string, which date() can't recognize.

You can use strtotime() to convert a date string into a timestamp. However, even strtotime() doesn't recognize the y-m-d-h-i-s format.

PHP 5.3 and up

Use DateTime::createFromFormat. It allows you to specify an exact mask - using the date() syntax - to parse incoming string dates with.

PHP 5.2 and lower

You will have to parse the elements (year, month, day, hour, minute, second) manually using substr() and hand the results to mktime() that will build you a timestamp.

But that's a lot of work! I recommend using a different format that strftime() can understand. strftime() understands any date input short of the next time joe will slip on the ice. for example, this works:

$old_date = date('l, F d y h:i:s');              // returns Saturday, January 30 10 02:06:34
$old_date_timestamp = strtotime($old_date);
$new_date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $old_date_timestamp);   

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How to: Calculate the difference between 2 dates in PHP

Input:

Start Date: 2007-03-24 
End Date: 2009-06-26

Output:

2 years, 3 months and 2 days

Use strtotime() to convert two dates to unix time and then calculate the number of seconds between them. From this it's rather easy to calculate different time periods.

$date1 = "2007-03-24";
$date2 = "2009-06-26";

$diff = abs(strtotime($date2) - strtotime($date1));

$years = floor($diff / (365*60*60*24));
$months = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24) / (30*60*60*24));
$days = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24 - $months*30*60*60*24)/ (60*60*24));

printf("%d years, %d months, %d days\n", $years, $months, $days);

Obviously the preferred way of doing this is like described by jurka below. My code is generally only recommended if you don't have PHP 5.3 or better.

Several people in the comments have pointed out that the code above is only an approximation. I still believe that for most purposes that's fine, since the usage of a range is more to provide a sense of how much time has passed or remains rather than to provide precision - if you want to do that, just output the date.

Despite all that, I've decided to address the complaints. If you truly need an exact range but haven't got access to PHP 5.3, use the code below (it should work in PHP 4 as well). This is a direct port of the code that PHP uses internally to calculate ranges, with the exception that it doesn't take daylight savings time into account. That means that it's off by an hour at most, but except for that it should be correct.

<?php

/**
 * Calculate differences between two dates with precise semantics. Based on PHPs DateTime::diff()
 * implementation by Derick Rethans. Ported to PHP by Emil H, 2011-05-02. No rights reserved.
 * 
 * See here for original code:
 * http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/trunk/ext/date/lib/tm2unixtime.c?revision=302890&view=markup
 * http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/trunk/ext/date/lib/interval.c?revision=298973&view=markup
 */

function _date_range_limit($start, $end, $adj, $a, $b, $result)
{
    if ($result[$a] < $start) {
        $result[$b] -= intval(($start - $result[$a] - 1) / $adj) + 1;
        $result[$a] += $adj * intval(($start - $result[$a] - 1) / $adj + 1);
    }

    if ($result[$a] >= $end) {
        $result[$b] += intval($result[$a] / $adj);
        $result[$a] -= $adj * intval($result[$a] / $adj);
    }

    return $result;
}

function _date_range_limit_days($base, $result)
{
    $days_in_month_leap = array(31, 31, 29, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31);
    $days_in_month = array(31, 31, 28, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31);

    _date_range_limit(1, 13, 12, "m", "y", &$base);

    $year = $base["y"];
    $month = $base["m"];

    if (!$result["invert"]) {
        while ($result["d"] < 0) {
            $month--;
            if ($month < 1) {
                $month += 12;
                $year--;
            }

            $leapyear = $year % 400 == 0 || ($year % 100 != 0 && $year % 4 == 0);
            $days = $leapyear ? $days_in_month_leap[$month] : $days_in_month[$month];

            $result["d"] += $days;
            $result["m"]--;
        }
    } else {
        while ($result["d"] < 0) {
            $leapyear = $year % 400 == 0 || ($year % 100 != 0 && $year % 4 == 0);
            $days = $leapyear ? $days_in_month_leap[$month] : $days_in_month[$month];

            $result["d"] += $days;
            $result["m"]--;

            $month++;
            if ($month > 12) {
                $month -= 12;
                $year++;
            }
        }
    }

    return $result;
}

function _date_normalize($base, $result)
{
    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 60, 60, "s", "i", $result);
    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 60, 60, "i", "h", $result);
    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 24, 24, "h", "d", $result);
    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 12, 12, "m", "y", $result);

    $result = _date_range_limit_days(&$base, &$result);

    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 12, 12, "m", "y", $result);

    return $result;
}

/**
 * Accepts two unix timestamps.
 */
function _date_diff($one, $two)
{
    $invert = false;
    if ($one > $two) {
        list($one, $two) = array($two, $one);
        $invert = true;
    }

    $key = array("y", "m", "d", "h", "i", "s");
    $a = array_combine($key, array_map("intval", explode(" ", date("Y m d H i s", $one))));
    $b = array_combine($key, array_map("intval", explode(" ", date("Y m d H i s", $two))));

    $result = array();
    $result["y"] = $b["y"] - $a["y"];
    $result["m"] = $b["m"] - $a["m"];
    $result["d"] = $b["d"] - $a["d"];
    $result["h"] = $b["h"] - $a["h"];
    $result["i"] = $b["i"] - $a["i"];
    $result["s"] = $b["s"] - $a["s"];
    $result["invert"] = $invert ? 1 : 0;
    $result["days"] = intval(abs(($one - $two)/86400));

    if ($invert) {
        _date_normalize(&$a, &$result);
    } else {
        _date_normalize(&$b, &$result);
    }

    return $result;
}

$date = "1986-11-10 19:37:22";

print_r(_date_diff(strtotime($date), time()));
print_r(_date_diff(time(), strtotime($date)));

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