How algorithm of strtotime(PHP Date function) Works?

Question

1. i wanna to know how strtotime (php Date function) work?
2. how Parse string Like "15 September 2012" to timeStamp
3. is there any better algorithm?

my purpose is changing this function for Persian Language

Answer 1

You can browse the source code of PHP ( https://github.com/php/php-src) and search function to see its implementation.

UPDATE

Here is the algorithm of the function strtotime () https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/ext/date/php_date.c#L1324

Regards!.

Answer 2

since strtotime accepts English input, I'd recommend taking the Persian input: "15 (SOMETHING_PERSIAN) 2012" and replace the required string (you need some RegExp and a switch statement, I guess) and make it "15 (SOMETHING_ENGLISH) 2012" and THEN send it to strtotime

Answer 3

i wanna to know how strtotime (php Date function) work?

Go here: https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/ext/date/lib/parse_date.c

Search for timelib_strtotime.

Answer 4

forget about it, use php Intl extension. in future will be a part of php core.

<?php
    // format
    $format = datefmt_create('fa_IR@calendar=persian', IntlDateFormatter::FULL, IntlDateFormatter::FULL, 'Asia/Tehran', IntlDateFormatter::TRADITIONAL, 'yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm');

    // time in locale as you wish
    var_dump(datefmt_format($format, time())); // '۱۳۹۱/۰۲/۰۴ ۱۹:۱۵'

support ICU project if you want to support Persian in i18n for all languages.

php intl extension

icu-project.org

Answer 5

The method that actually parses the string is in parse_date.re's scan() method. There you will find all strtotime keywords and their behaviors.

That library is included from https://github.com/derickr/timelib.