Need help formatting Unix Date from XML output. - facebook

Question

I have an events feed from facebook that outputs data in XML format. The dates/ times are in epoch (unix) format, I think. Like so:
<start_time>1319506200</start_time><end_time>1319511600</end_time>
This is dynamic information (events created by a facebook page).
I am using php file_get_contents to place the xml output in my html.
How in the world can I convert the unix dates to a user friendly format? I am at a total loss.

Answer 1

Simply use string date ( string $format [, int $timestamp = time() ] )
Extract the timestamp value from the xml string and pass in as argument #2 to date, as argument #1 you should supply your preferred format string, for example 'Y-m-d T:i:s'
Extracting he timestamp could probably look something like this:
Given that you have the event feed output data stored in a string, in this case $xmlstr
$facebooksomething = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlstr);
date('Y-m-d T:i:s', $facebooksomething->starttime);

Answer 2

Finally got this figured out! :) Woohoo! (changed from the xml feed to json feed by the way) This is what ended up working:
$start_date = date('F j, Y, g:i a', strtotime($json_output2->start_time));
$end_date = date('g:i a', strtotime($json_output2->end_time));
Here is my full code:
<?php
$jsonurl = "https://graph.facebook.com/PAGEID/events?access_token=MYYOKEN";
$json = file_get_contents($jsonurl,0,null,null);
$json_output = json_decode($json);
foreach ( $json_output->data as $data)
{
$jsonurl2 = "https://graph.facebook.com/$data->id/";
$json2 = file_get_contents($jsonurl2,0,null,null);
$json_output2 = json_decode($json2);
$start_date = date('F j, Y, g:i a', strtotime($json_output2->start_time));
$end_date = date('g:i a', strtotime($json_output2->end_time));
echo "{$json_output2->name}\n";
echo "<br>";
echo "{$start_date}\n";
echo " - ";
echo "{$end_date}\n";
echo "<br>";
echo "{$json_output2->description}\n";
echo "<br>Where: ";
echo "{$json_output2->location}\n";
echo "<br><br>";
}
?>