Converting MySQL dateTime to RFC-822 (RSS pubDate) in PHP

I had the need to convert a MySQL datetime time stamp into a format accepted by the RSS 2.0 specification. To get the first part, you can do a SQL query like the following:

1

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(dateTimeColumn, '%a, %d %b %Y %T') AS rssPubDate FROM yourTable

After that, you need to get the timezone, which can be accomplished by using this:

1

$timeZone = date('T');

So lets say you store the rssPubDate from MySQL in a variable called $rssPubDate, all you need to do is $rssPubDate .= ” {$timeZone}”;

That’s it! You now have a RFC-822 compliant time stamp.