WeberDev.com -> PHP Manual -> Parse about any English textual datetime description into a Unix timestamp

Description

int strtotime ( string $time [, int $now ] )

The function expects to be given a string containing a US English date format and will try to parse that format into a Unix timestamp (the number of seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT), relative to the timestamp given in now , or the current time if now is not supplied.

This function will use the TZ environment variable (if available) to calculate the timestamp. Since PHP 5.1.0 there are easier ways to define the timezone that is used across all date/time functions. That process is explained in the date_default_timezone_get() function page.

Note: If the number of the year is specified in a two digit format, the values between 00-69 are mapped to 2000-2069 and 70-99 to 1970-1999.

Parameters

time: The string to parse, according to the GNU » Date Input Formats syntax. Before PHP 5.0.0, microseconds weren't allowed in the time, since PHP 5.0.0 they are allowed but ignored.
now: The timestamp used to calculate the returned value.

Return Values

Returns a timestamp on success, FALSE otherwise. Previous to PHP 5.1.0, this function would return -1 on failure.

Errors/Exceptions

Every call to a date/time function will generate a E_NOTICE if the time zone is not valid, and/or a E_STRICT message if using the system settings or the TZ environment variable. See also date_default_timezone_set()

ChangeLog

Version	Description
5.1.0	It now returns `FALSE` on failure, instead of -1.
5.1.0	Now issues the `E_STRICT` and `E_NOTICE` time zone errors.

Examples

Example #1 A strtotime() example

 <?php
echo strtotime("now"), "\n";
echo strtotime("10 September 2000"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 day"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds"), "\n";
echo strtotime("next Thursday"), "\n";
echo strtotime("last Monday"), "\n";
?>

Example #2 Checking for failure

 <?php
$str = 'Not Good';

// previous to PHP 5.1.0 you would compare with -1, instead of false
if (($timestamp = strtotime($str)) === false) {
    echo "The string ($str) is bogus";
} else {
    echo "$str == " . date('l dS \o\f F Y h:i:s A', $timestamp);
}
?>

Notes

Warning

In PHP 5 up to 5.0.2, "now" and other relative times are wrongly computed from today's midnight. It differs from other versions where it is correctly computed from current time.