I have string naming the date and time in the format of d-m-Y_h-i-sa
an example being '10-01-2019_03-31-06pm'
I want to turn this into a unix timestamp.
So I use $date = date_create_from_format('d-m-Y_h-i-sa', '10-01-2019_03-31-06pm')
and then echo date_timestamp_get($date)
This works, but the problem is that I won't always be passing through literal strings for the second parameter of the function.. as instead I want to use data from a table in a database so that it's dynamic.
an example being $row['file_name']
However if I do $date = date_create_from_format('d-m-Y_h-i-sa', $row['file_name'])
and then echo date_timestamp_get($date)
it doesn't echo anything.
I have done var_dump($row['file_name']) and it confirms it is definitely a string.. so I don't understand why the first way works (using a literal string) but the second way won't work (when that's also classed as a string)
In $date = date_create_from_format('d-m-Y_h-i-sa', '$row['file_name']') there should be no quotes around $row['file_name] because doing so gives this as a string, not the value. So instead do
$date = date_create_from_format('d-m-Y_h-i-sa', $row['file_name'])