converting date format from 0000-00-00 to timestamp

I have a date picker that returns date in the format 0000-00-00 with

$startT = isset($_POST["startT"]) ? $_POST["startT"] : "";

how do I convert this formatted date into a timestamp? Thanks

If you have PHP 5.3, which you should, the easiest way is:

$timestamp = new DateTime($_POST['startT']);
$timestamp->getTimestamp();

The easiest way is

echo mktime($_POST["startT"]);

Use strtotime() which works pretty fine in most cases

$time = strtotime($_POST['startT']);