How to convert hour to timestamp in php

In PHP programming, timestamp is a very important concept. Any program that needs to record time needs to use a timestamp, which can represent the number of seconds from January 1, 1970 to the present, and is an accurate standard for measuring time. In PHP, you can use the date and time functions to obtain the current timestamp, but sometimes you need to convert an hour into a timestamp. In this case, you need to use some functions of PHP to perform the conversion.

1. What is a timestamp?

Time stamp is a way for computers to record time. It is the number of seconds since 0:00 on January 1, 1970 to the present. This method is convenient and accurate, and will not be affected by problems such as time zone offset. PHP provides some functions that can operate timestamps, such as time(), date(), strtotime(), etc.

2. Use the date function to convert hours into timestamps

The strtotime function is a function that converts a string containing date and time information into a timestamp. The fundamental of this function is to convert the date The format is converted to Unix timestamp format. We can use this function to convert hours to timestamp. For example:

$hour = "14";
$timestamp = strtotime($hour . ':00:00');
echo $timestamp;

Here we concatenate the hour string and a "00:00:00" string into a time string, and then convert it into a timestamp through the strtotime function.

3. Use the mktime function to convert hours into timestamps

The mktime function is a powerful time function that can be used to generate timestamps. The parameters of this function are time units, such as hours, minutes, seconds, etc. We can get the timestamp of a specific time by passing in the hour and setting other time units to 0. For example:

$hour = "14";
$timestamp = mktime($hour, 0, 0, date('m'), date('d'), date('Y'));
echo $timestamp;

Here we set the hour to 14, and the other time units are set to the current time value. At this time, the mktime function will calculate the timestamp of this time based on these parameters.

4. Use the DateTime class to convert hours into timestamps

The DateTime class is a new time class in PHP5.2 and later versions, which provides some powerful time operation functions. Its use is also very simple. You can create a time object by passing in a time string through the constructor, and then return the timestamp through the format method. For example:

$hour = "14";
$datetime_str = date('Y-m-d') . " " . $hour . ":00:00";
$datetime = new DateTime($datetime_str);
$timestamp = $datetime->format('U');
echo $timestamp;

Here we also splice a time string, then use it to create a DateTime object, and return a timestamp through the format method. The advantage of this method is that the code is concise, easy to understand, and less error-prone.

To sum up, we can convert hours to timestamps through the above three methods. Which method to use depends on the actual needs. No matter which method is used, timestamp is an important tool for us to deal with time. Mastering it can make our programming more convenient.

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