Whether you are posting a date or a passing variable that is a formatted date you can use the function below to convert it into a timestamp function convert_timestamp($delimeter,$date){ $explode_date = explode($delimeter,$date); $new_date = mktime(0,0,0,$explode_date[1],$explode_date[0],$explode_date[2]); return $new_date; } Now to test the function we have created is shown below. $date = “01/12/2009″; $delimeter = “/”; [...]