将mm：ss和hh：mm转换为php中的时间戳

Question

How can I convert a string, such as 02:00 to a timestamp that can be saved into the databse as an integer? It can either be mm:ss or hh:mm depending on what I want the user to input in the form. But it's always either mm:ss or hh:mm

strtotime delivers unreliable results, so I figured it's not the right way to go. Is there another way I'm not aware of?

EDIT

To ask the question in a better way: I have a form that has an input for mm:ss and an input for hh:mm values. I need to convert these values to unix timestamps. Obviously strtotime is not the way to go for this.

Answer 1

You cant convert only minutes or hours to timestamp, you need to have a date. In php you can use mktime function:

$time = mktime($hours, $minutes, $seconds, $month, $day, $year);

Docs: http://php.net/manual/en/function.mktime.php

For example you have hh:mm input

$input = '02:15';

$arr = array_map('intval', explode(':', $input));

// Create timestamp with selected time for today date
$time = mktime($arr[0], $arr[1], 1, date('m'), date('d'), date('Y'));