Converting a string to a timestamp is one of my favorite things about PHP. In
fact when trying to decide which language to build [HolidayAPI][holidayapi] in
I couldn’t find an implementation of PHP’s strtotime() that rivaled the
original. The strtotime() function takes a textual string as input and then
spits back a timestamp, which can then be used to generate a more human
readable date time string.
Here are some examples of how you can use strtotime() to find out the date
and time of relative strings:
strtotime('tomorrow'
strtotime('next Tuesday'
strtotime('3rd Thursday of Februrary'
strtotime('+90 days'
strtotime('July 4th, 2015 +2 weeks'
Not ever string works but quite a few do. Also the resulting timestamp is based
on the current day unless you explicitly tell it a date, like my last example.
I recently found out about an interval that I didn’t realized worked. It’s the
weekday keyword. Would come in handy when you need to calculate business
days for say, shipping or something.
strtotime('today +7 weekdays'
As mentioned, this returns the UNIX timestamp but you can easily convert it to
something more friendly with the date() function.
