How can PHP developers ensure that the date format is in the correct English format (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS) before using strtotime() function?

When using the strtotime() function in PHP, it is important to ensure that the date format provided is in the correct English format (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS) to avoid any parsing errors. One way to ensure this is by using the date_create_from_format() function to explicitly specify the expected date format before passing it to strtotime(). 

$date_str = "2022-01-15 14:30:00";
$date_obj = date_create_from_format('Y-m-d H:i:s', $date_str);
if($date_obj){
    $timestamp = strtotime($date_obj->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'));
    echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $timestamp);
} else {
    echo "Invalid date format";
}

Keywords

PHP date format strtotime() English format validation

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