If your development involves working with dates and times, then this book is a must-have. In this book, Derick Rethans (contributor to PHP’s core date extension and well-known PHP expert) explores in great detail the subtle nuances of working with dates and times. Frequently PHP developers encounter unexpected results that adversely affect their software and web applications. This book will undoubtedly help them tackle those issues.
This book covers a variety of areas including:
* history of calendars and time standards, giving the reader a better understanding of how date/time concepts evolved into the way they are today
* parsing date/time strings and the potential pitfalls a developer can encounter
* timezones, the quirks inherent in them, and how your application can handle these quirks
* formatting and representing times and dates correctly and dealing with the DateTime Object
* manipulating and working with past, future and recurring dates
* obtaining dates when timestamps aren’t available
* format specifiers
* upgrading the master timezone database