More Date Questions

[rwilkerson]

I know this gets tedious, but I've posted several, more general, questions and haven't gotten a response that quite works. I'm going to try one more time, but with the exact nature of the problem in the hopes that maybe I just haven't been very clear before.

I have a MySQL timestamp field that I'd like to display in a more user friendly manner. I've tried using the date() function, but with no luck.

MySQL Timestamp Value : 20020211192917
PHP Display Code : echo date ( 'd.M.Y', $last_update );
PHP Display Result : 18.Jan.2038

From tons of reading, I thoroughly understand the significance of the date being displayed, but I have no idea why I'm not getting the correct date. Is what I'm trying to do impossible with PHP? If not, what am I missing?

Thanks for any help.

[factory21]

You need to read up on the MySQL documentation on TIMESTAMP:

TIMESTAMP format is YYYYMMDDHHMMSS

whereas PHP timestamp is:
"measured in the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT)."

These are TOTALLY DIFFERENT formats!

Best way to convert the MySQL timestamp is to use the MySQL function:

UNIX_TIMESTAMP(timeStampField)

[rwilkerson]

I had actually tried that with no success, but after reading your post, I looked it over again and found that I had an extra space in my UNIX_TIMESTAMP() function. Killed that and all was well.

I didn't realize that MySQL was so picky about its spacing.

Thanks for your help. I'm embarrassed to tell you how long I've been fighting this particular issue. I really appreciate it.

[Anon]

Hey there.
In your select statement coming from the DB put this:
SELECT DATE_FORMAT(date_field, '%M %d, %Y at %h:%i %p') as date WHERE blah='blah'

Also look at mysql.com for more info on the DATE_FORMAT

Bill