How to convert a Date into Timestamp using PHP ?

Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025

The Task is to convert a Date to a timestamp using PHP. The task can be done by using the strtotime() function in PHP. It is used to convert English textual date-time description to a UNIX timestamp. The UNIX timestamp represents the number of seconds between a particular date and the Unix Epoch.

Syntax:

strtotime ($EnglishDateTime, $time_now)

Example:

PHP

// PHP program to convert the date 
// to timestamp 
<?php

$date = "2020-09-23";
$timestamp1 = strtotime($date);
echo $timestamp1; 
echo "<br>";
 
$date2 = "24-09-2020";
$timestamp2 = strtotime($date2);
echo $timestamp2; 
echo "<br>";
 
$date3 = "16 May 2019";
$timestamp3 = strtotime($date3);
echo $timestamp3;
?>
?>