PHP & Javascript & ASP: Format ATOM Date

calendar Apr 24, 2006  · Updated: November 1, 2025 · 1 min read  ·
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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:

1<?php
2$atomdate = "2006-04-22T10:00:00.000Z";
3echo date("m.d.y", strtotime($atomdate));
4?>

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

1var atomdate = items[n].getElementsByTagName('published').item(0).firstChild.data;
2var itemPubDateDay = atomdate.substr(0, 10);
3var itemPubDateTime = atomdate.substr(11, 8);
4print itemPubDateDay;

And this time in ASP

1<%
2atomdate = "2006-04-22T10:00:00.000Z"
3dateandtime = mid(atomdate, 1, 10) & " " & mid(atomdate, 12, 8)
4response.write formatdatetime(dateandtime)
5%>