I have the variable $EDate, I used strtotime function with this variable with different values and the result was as following:
$EDate = 10-21-2013; echo "strtotime($EDate)"; the result = nothing and the type is boolean
$EDate = 09-02-2013; echo "strtotime($EDate)"; the result = 1360386000 and the type is integer
$EDate = 09-30-2013; echo "strtotime($EDate)"; the result = nothing and the type is boolean
$EDate = 09-30-2013; echo "strtotime($EDate)"; the result = nothing and the type is boolean
$EDate = 07-02-2014; echo "strtotime($EDate)"; the result = 1391749200 and the type is integer
$EDate = 10-12-2014; echo "strtotime($EDate)"; the result = 1418187600 and the type is integer
Can anybody explain this and how to avoid the boolean result?
From the documentation:
Dates in the m/d/y or d-m-y formats are disambiguated by looking at the separator between the various components: if the separator is a slash (/), then the American m/d/y is assumed; whereas if the separator is a dash (-) or a dot (.), then the European d-m-y format is assumed.
Your code assumes that the date is in d-m-y format, and will return FALSE since the month values are incorrect:
var_dump(strtotime('10-21-2013')); // no month 21
var_dump(strtotime('09-30-2013'));
var_dump(strtotime('09-30-2013'));
If you want to be able to use custom formats, use DateTime::createFromFormat() instead:
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('m-d-Y', '10-21-2013');
echo $date->format('U');