Preg_split on 2 characters

Im trying to split a string on 2 variables (T & +) which when using on "2018-06-25T10:32:00+01:00" will split it to:-

[0] => 2018-06-25
[1] => 10:32:00
[2] => 01:00


So I thought I could use "preg_split("/ (T|+) /", $ent)", but it itsnt working at all.

My code I have (in PHP) is:-

$ent = "2018-06-25T10:32:00+01:00";
print_r(preg_split("/ (T|+) /", $ent));


Any ideas what Im doing wrong?

regex

DateTime

3 Answers
3

You have the problem in your regex. You can give it like below;

print_r(preg_split("/T|+/", $ent));


Without using a regex, you can also use the php's Datetime class to split this into date and time (I prefer this).

$ent = '2018-06-25T10:32:00+02:00';
$datetime = new DateTime($ent);

$date = $datetime->format('Y-m-d');
$time = $datetime->format('H:i:s');
$offset = $datetime->getOffset() / 3600;

echo $date.'<br/>';
echo $time.'<br/>';
echo $offset.'<br/>';


Hope it helps!!

Parsing dates in PHP is not the best use case for regex. Maybe it is the best way to handle dates in other languages but not in PHP. PHP provides the DateTime classes that handle the dates faster and safer than manual parsing.

regex

DateTime

This is how your code should look like:

$date = new DateTime("2018-06-25T10:32:00+01:00");

echo $date->format('Y-m-d'), "n";
echo $date->format('H:i:s'), "n";
echo $date->format('P'), "n";


Check out the result: https://3v4l.org/gFvLp

Read more about the DateTime class and DateTime::format().

DateTime

DateTime::format()

For your example you use an alternation with whitespaces (T|+) which have meaning.

(T|+)

What you could do is remove the whitespaces and use (T|+) or as an alternative use a character class [T+]

(T|+)

[T+]

$ent = "2018-06-25T10:32:00+01:00";
print_r(preg_split("/[T+]/", $ent));


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