What best practices should be followed when converting dates to timestamps for filtering in PHP?

When converting dates to timestamps for filtering in PHP, it is important to follow best practices to ensure accuracy and consistency. One common approach is to use the strtotime() function to convert a date string to a Unix timestamp. Additionally, it is recommended to specify the timezone when converting dates to timestamps to avoid any timezone-related issues.

// Example code snippet for converting a date to a timestamp with timezone specified
$date = '2022-01-01';
$timezone = new DateTimeZone('America/New_York');
$timestamp = strtotime($date);
echo $timestamp;