php datetime createformat parse

Question

I'm trying to parse following string:

 Thu Oct 03 2013 07:03:41 GMT+0200 (Central Europe Standard Time)

But I'm struggling to find the corresponding format, I tried:

  $date= DateTime::createFromFormat('D M d Y H:i:s eO (*)','Thu Oct 03 2013 07:03:41 GMT+0200 (Central Europe Standard Time)');
  echo $date->format('Y-m-d');

Which results in error. Problem is, that there is no space between GMT+0200 and the brackets. Following works just fine

$date= DateTime::createFromFormat('D M d Y H:i:s e O','Thu Oct 03 2013 07:03:41 GMT +0200');
echo $date->format('Y-m-d');

But (obviously) I should be able to parse also the first example. So do you have any suggestion how the correct format should look like?

the error I get:

Fatal error: Call to a member function format() on a non-object in C:\....

var_dump of $date before calling $date->format:

 boolean false

Answer 1

The problem is the format string, which should be

D M d Y H:i:s e+

I have replaced eO with just e because the input contains GMT+0200, which does not have a separator between "GMT" and the offset. I have also replaced the (*) part with +, which is the only specifier that can consume a variable amount of input (* matches one token, i.e. one word -- if there is more input afterwards the parse fails).

Note that there will still be a warning due to the use of + (use DateTime::getLastErrors to see it), but the conversion will work correctly.