Sort by text date in php?

Question

PHP

I have data where %CreationDate% is formatted as strings like
[Sun May 01 00:00:00 +0000 2011].
Is there any way to sort the data by date without any special tricks? Maybe there is an easy way to overtake this text string with a date into something else - more digestible for sorting without straining?

Answer 1

en.php.net/strtotime

Answer 2

Personally, I would do this:
* turn the string back into a DateTime object
* use the format("U") method to get the timestamp
* compare the dates by the received value

Answer 3

If the string format is always constant, you have to convert strings to numbers very often, and the execution time is critical, then I would advise you to write your own function “tailored” for this format, and not use the universal strtotime (after writing the function, you should of course compare its performance with strtotime).