strtotime() is returning a 1970 date and don't comparing well to time()-CodePudding

I'm trying to convert a string that enters in my program from a JSON to a date, so I can compare it to actual time.
I'm using strtotime() but it converts the original date to 01/01/1970 12:00:00.
Here's my code:

var_dump($requestOrder->date);
$requestDate= date('d/m/Y h:i:s', strtotime($requestOrder->date));
var_dump($requestDate);

Where, date inside the $requestOrder is equal to "24/12/2021 00:00:00".
And here's what I'm getting:

string(19) "24/12/2021 00:00:00"
string(19) "01/01/1970 12:00:00"

I need to convert it to a date because, lately, in some point of my code, I do this:

if($requestDate< date('d/m/Y h:i:s', time())) {
    ...
}

I've been trying a lot of options to solve this problem, such as changing the / to -, using other formats for the date, etc, but with no luck. In the case of using a str_replace to change the / to -, it works and doesn't show a 70's date, but then it doesn't do the comparison well, it always detects the date smallest to actual one.
Does someone see what I'm skipping?

CodePudding user response：

The date() function returns a string not a DateTime object. It would be better to use the actual DateTime class and its createFromFormat function.

$requestDate = date_create_from_format('d/m/Y h:i:s', $requestOrder->date);

or object oriented style

$requestDate = DateTime::createFromFormat('d/m/Y h:i:s', $requestOrder->date);

https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.createfromformat.php

CodePudding user response：

Please check below code:

$requestOrder->date="24/12/2021 00:00:00";
$date=str_replace("/",'-',$requestOrder->date);  
if(strtotime($date)>time())
{
   //this will  execute as request date is greater than current date
}
if(strtotime($date)<time())
{
   //this will not execute as current date less than request date
}