[SOLVED] Help with if/else statement

[sailorsmokey]

Hi everyone!

 

I know my logic must be faulty somewhere here, because this if/else statement isn't returning the correct result.  Could someone either correct me or at least give me enough direction to find my own mistake?  I'm trying to take the current date, and check to see if it within the range of the date it becomes valid, and the expiration date.  I thought this would be simple, and it probably is, but I'm missing something.

 

Here's what I've got:

 

$today=getdate();
if($today<$valid_date or $today>$exp_date)
{
echo "<p>Coupon has expired - discount not included in total.<br />";
}

[Ken2k7]

$today is an array, just so you know.

 

var_dump($today);

 

^ that should display what's in the array.

 

What values do $valid_date and $exp_date hold?

[sailorsmokey]

Now I feel a little ridiculous.  I used to be pretty handy with this PHP stuff, and I haven't touched it for a while, so I'm obviously quite a bit rusty.

 

$valid_date is a value from MySQL table, stored as YYYY-MM-DD, and in this case it is 2009-05-01.

 

$exp_date is the same, and in this case it is 2009-12-31.

 

Any other comments that could help me out would be appreciated - meanwhile, I'll start reading up on date() and var_dump() a bit.

[Ken2k7]

$today=date('Y-m-d', time());
if($today<$valid_date || $today>$exp_date) {
echo "<p>Coupon has expired - discount not included in total.<br />";
}

 

Try that.

[sailorsmokey]

Thank you so much for not telling me to leave my head in the sand.  I really appreciate it.  This did work, and meanwhile, I will continue to study up and get my head back in the game.