Replace text on input

[wmguk]

Hey,

 

I ask for a date of birth on my input form, however people put anything from 19.9.74, 19/9/74, 19/09/74, 19.09.74, 19.09.1974, 19/09/1974

 

and i want the date to always be written as 19/09/1974

 

Whats the best way to take their info and make it work with my prefered info?

[Adam]

Well you could just use three inputs, or three drop down menus to avoid confusion. But if not I suppose you could use a regular expression to extract the 3 parts and then join them back together using your preferred method...

 

Adam

 

[MadTechie]

Not sure if this helps but you could do this

<?php
$data = '19.9.74, 19/9/74, 19/09/74, 19.09.74, 19.09.1974, 19/09/1974';
$data = preg_replace('/(\d{1,2}).(\d{1,2}).(19|20)?(\d{2})/i', '\1/\2/\3\4', $data);

echo $data; //19/9/74, 19/9/74, 19/09/74, 19/09/74, 19/09/1974, 19/09/1974
?>

 

EDIT: ooops just re-read.. i thought to had a ton of info and needed to reformat it..

 

for getting the input you could google JS calander theirs tons and it look fancy or have 2-3 drop downs

[Adam]

Had a quick play, regular expression would look something like:

 

^[\d]{2}[-\.:\|][\d]{2}[-\.:\|](19|20)[\d]{2}$

 

.. That would only match a string in format: DD MM YYYY with a delimiter between them of either: - : . |

 

However I do not know how you could use preg_replace() to replace the delimiter with / every time, perhaps somebody else has an idea??

 

Adam

[MadTechie]

MrAdam's RegEx, with a tweak to capture

 

$data = preg_replace('/^([\d]{2})[-\.:\|]([\d]{2})[-\.:\|]((?:19|20)[\d]{2})$/i', '\1/\2/\3', $data);

 

changing

(?:19|20)[\d]{2}

to

(?:19|20)?[\d]{2}

will allow DD MM YY formatting as well

[Mark Baker]

I suppose you could use a regular expression to extract the 3 parts and then join them back together using your preferred method...

Although how would a regexp identify whether 12/5/2008 was 12th May 2008 or 5th December 2008?

[Adam]

however people put anything from 19.9.74, 19/9/74, 19/09/74, 19.09.74, 19.09.1974, 19/09/1974

 

One or two I didn't notice before but, he doesn't appear to be having problems with "15th December 2008".. A maxlength of 10 would also prevent them entering anything like that.

 

Give them a hint? For example:

 

Date of birth: [                              ] Eg. 19/9/1974

 

Would stop the masses entering it wrong, and should account for the odd one who uses a different delimiter!

 

Adam