How to get a timestamp in php

First of all, what is a unix timestamp? It’s a number of seconds since 00:00:00, January 1st, 1970 UTC. When you already know what you want, instead of how you want it, you’re good to go and discover if there is a class that serves your needs. In the case of a timestamp, there is one, and it’s called SecondsSinceJanuary1st1970. If you want to find out current unix timestamp, you can pass current datetime as an argument:

$c = new SecondsSinceJanuary1st1970(new Now());

In the same vein, you can pass any other ISO8601 datetime:

$c =
   new SecondsSinceJanuary1st1970(
      new Max(
         new Now(),
         new Future(
            new FromISO8601('1986-05-04 00:30:00+03'),
            new NYears(34)
         )
      )
   );

As usual, if you want a textual representation, value() method is just for that.

Also note that timestamp doesn’t depend on a timezone, since it’s the number of seconds since January 1st midnight 1970 in UTC timezone. This timezone is embedded into the very definition of a timestamp.