PHP & Javascript & ASP: Format ATOM Date

Posted on April 24, 2006 by

I’m surprised this isn’t built in.. I had the hardest time finding how to convert ATOM time (found in many RSS feeds) to something human-readable. The cleanest solution I have found thus far is this:

<?php

$atomdate = '2006-04-22T10:00:00.000Z';

$datetime = strtotime(substr($atomdate, 0, 10) . ' ' . substr($atomdate, 11, 8 ));

print date('m.d.y',$datetime);

?>

That outputs “04.22.06” but you can use any of the formats available from php date().

Here is basically the same routine, but this time in Javascript

var atomdate = items[n].getElementsByTagName('published').item(0).firstChild.data;

var itemPubDateDay = atomdate.substr(0, 10);

var itemPubDateTime = atomdate.substr(11, 8 );

print itemPubDateDay;

And this time in ASP

<%

atomdate = "2006-04-22T10:00:00.000Z"

dateandtime = mid(atomdate, 1, 10) & " " & mid(atomdate, 12, 8 )

response.write formatdatetime(dateandtime)

%>

About Chrissy LeMaire

Chrissy is a Cloud and Datacenter Management & Data Platform MVP who has worked in IT for over 20 years. She is the creator of the popular SQL PowerShell module dbatools, and holds a number of certifications, including those relating to SQL Server, Linux, SharePoint and network security. You can follow her on Twitter at @cl.

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8 comments on “PHP & Javascript & ASP: Format ATOM Date”

TK says:

May 5, 2006 at 4:54 pm

Thanks for the code! But can you please explain how the PHP code can be used? I am very new to ATOM, but I am trying to display it on a website and I really, really, hate the date format. Plus, I can’t figure out where and how to put the PHP code you provided above.

Thanks in advance.

Reply
Chrissy says:

May 10, 2006 at 10:39 pm

Hey TK,
Here is an example of how you can parse ATOM XML in PHP.

Hope that helps,
Chrissy

Reply
Maltpress says:

September 3, 2006 at 4:25 am

Thank you – struggling with learning PHP and trying to parse my blog on my website. Had it all working except the date and stumbled on this via Google. With a bit of thought, a tiny hint of swearing, and a little sweat, I’ve not only got it working, I’ve also learnt a lot more about PHP…

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Deano says:

May 9, 2007 at 7:58 am

ahh thanks!!

Reply
Jamie says:

July 20, 2007 at 10:15 am

Thank you so much for your help! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for! It took me a while to find it too, I guess I should’ve typed ‘php format atom date’ into the search and then it would’ve been easier for me. I was trying things like php date help!!!!!!!!!!

:)

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Duncan says:

December 28, 2007 at 4:16 pm

Thank you for saving me time and effort!

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Timmy says:

January 8, 2008 at 1:03 pm

Thanks. Perfect.

Reply
Philip says:

June 8, 2009 at 10:58 am

you can now use the shorter method of:

echo date( DateTime::RFC822, strtotime(‘2009-05-12T16:46:21.000Z’) );

For constants other than DateTime::RFC822 see:
http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php

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