Cakephp: add minutes to datetime object

Question

I am new to cakephp and i wish to do the following: I have a dateTime object and i want to add and subtract 30 minutes to it. Following is my code in controller :

$time = $this->request->data['Rideoffer']['DepartureTime'];
                    $date = new DateTime($time['hour'] . ':' . $time['min'] . ' ' . $time['meridian']); 

                        $currentDate = strtotime($date['date']); // this line gives error
                        $futureDate = $currentDate+(60*30);
                        $formatDate = date("Y-m-d H:i", $futureDate);

when i debug $date i get the following result:

 object(DateTime) {
 date => '2013-03-08 05:54:00'
 timezone_type => (int) 3
 timezone => 'UTC'
}

i wish to extract date from this object. How do i do so?

Answer 1

solved it:

 $currentDate = strtotime($date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'));

but i still dont get it that why cant i use $date['date'], i mean $date like an array.