Parse datetime and timestamp

Two functions in PHP allow us to parse datetime and timestamp.

Datetime parsing

extract(date_parse($datetime));

We automatically get $year, $month, $day, $hour, $minute, $second as local integer variables.

We also get a few more as described in the table below.

And we get a more descriptive date_parse exception if its output is invalid.

Timestamp parsing

extract(getdate($timestamp));

We automatically get $year, $mon, $mday, $hours, $minutes, $seconds as local integer variables.

We also get a few more as described in the table below.

And we get a more descriptive getdate exception if its output is invalid.

Variables output

The variable names returned from these two functions are not the same, except for $year.

date_parse()	getdate()
(int)`$year`	(int)`$year`
(int)`$month`	(int)`$mon`
(int)`$day`	(int)`$mday`
(int)`$hour`	(int)`$hours`
(int)`$minute`	(int)`$minutes`
(int)`$second`	(int)`$seconds`
(float)`$fraction`	N/A
(int)`$warning_count`	N/A
(array)`$warnings`	N/A
(int)`$error_count`	N/A
(array)`$errors`	N/A
(bool)`$is_localtime`	N/A
(int)`$zone_type`	N/A
(int)`$zone`	N/A
(bool)`$is_dst`	N/A
(string)`$tz_abbr`	N/A
(array)`$relative`	N/A
N/A	(int)`$wday`
N/A	(int)`$yday`
N/A	(string)`$weekday`
N/A	(string)`$month`
N/A	(int)`0` (seconds since Unix Epoch)

Encapsulate

To avoid local variable pollution, these PHP functions can be encapsulated.

function parse_datetime($datetime) {
    extract(date_parse($datetime));
    return compact('year', 'month', 'day', 'hour', 'minute', 'second');
}

function parse_timestamp($timestamp) {
    extract(getdate($timestamp));
    return [
        'year'   => $year,
        'month'  => $mon,
        'day'    => $mday,
        'hour'   => $hours,
        'minute' => $minutes,
        'second' => $seconds,
    ];
}

Automatically get $year, $month, $day, $hour, $minute, $second as local integer variables:

extract(parse_datetime($datetime));

extract(parse_timestamp($timestamp));