Android Question php strtotime equivalent in B4A

[Devv]

hi
what is the equivalent to the function http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php
in B4A ?


i have time in string format "Mon, 16 Oct 2017 06:53:59 +0000"

how can B4A understand that time and understanding the timezone difference?

 

[nwhitfield]

There are DateTime Parse functions; you will need to set the format string, which the Java docs suggest is ""EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"" to match the example you have there.

 

[Devv]

There are DateTime Parse functions; you will need to set the format string, which the Java docs suggest is ""EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"" to match the example you have there.

Thanks for fast replay
the problem that i have more than one format (php never had a problem with that)

 

[Devv]

I tried parse the date but i get unparsable date exception

    DateTime.DateFormat = "EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"
    Log(DateTime.("Mon, 16 Oct 2017 06:53:59 +0000",""))

any ideas ?

 

[nwhitfield]

  DateTime.DateFormat = "EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"
   Log (DateTime.DateParse("Mon, 16 Oct 2017 06:53:59 +0000"))

Result is 1508136839000; drop the last three digits, and paste into EpochConverter.com to confirm it works

 

[Devv]

  DateTime.DateFormat = "EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"
   Log (DateTime.DateParse("Mon, 16 Oct 2017 06:53:59 +0000"))

Result is 1508136839000; drop the last three digits, and paste into EpochConverter.com to confirm it works

thanks buddy
is it possible to do that to any time format?

 

[Knoppi]

look here for Date and Time Patterns
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.htmlhttp://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

 

[nwhitfield]

You'd need to test against different formats to see which was the right one to use. What's the context of the data you have here? Is it something like an email message header, for example? Or data obtained from the internet? Do you control the source? Can your app always be assumed to have connectivity?

If the data is coming from a database, for example, you can get the SQL query to calculate a timestamp (syntax may differ, this works for MySQL)

SELECT appointmentDate, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(appointmentDate) AS apptTS FROM appointments

If the data is in a well-defined header (for example, the Date: header of an email message), you should be able to narrow it down to just a few formats to try - check the relevant RFCs to see what's allowable.

If you know you'll have connectivity, and latency isn't an issue, and you have a server with PHP, you could also let it do the work, by POSTing to a script like

date_default_timezone_set('UTC') ;
$unixtime = strtotime($_REQUEST['TIME']) ;
$results = array('request' => $_REQUEST['TIME'], 'timestamp' => $unixtime );
print json_encode($results);

and then handling the JSON result. You could, perhaps, combine a selection - check in your code for the most common formats that you come across in your data, and if you find a date string that you can't handle, throw it at the webservice, which can also log the request, for you to work out the format and add it to the next version of the app.

 

[OliverA]

the problem that i have more than one format

Maybe somebody can wrap this for you (https://github.com/zeusbaba/strtotime-for-java).

(php never had a problem with that)

1) Yeah, but somebody in the PHP camp wrote a lot of code for that (see https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/ext/date/php_date.c).
2) Just for snark's sake: Can I build interfaces with PHP like B4A? B4A never had a problem with that.