I need some help formating dates and limiting words

[geko21]

hi guys, Im building a really basic blog which is going to be updated from phpmyadmin (until I build a CMS) but I need some help in two areas:

 

Number 1

 

For the look of the blog I want the date of the post that I entered in phpmyadmin to be shown on the page but instead of the date looking

like this

 

17/01/2011

 

I need the numbers to be stacked ontop of each and only showing the two numbers of each part other like this

 

17

01

11

 

Problem Number 2 is:

 

I have a description for each post but I dont want the whole description to be shown so I need to limit the amount of words the

posts are displaying, if that makes sense? Could someone show me how that would be done aswell?

 

Cheers

[JonnoTheDev]

1

<?php
$date = '17/01/2011';
$date = implode('<br />', explode('/',$date));
echo $date;

/* or */
$date = '17/01/2011';
$date = date('d<br />m<br />y', strtotime($date));
echo $date;

?>

 

2

<?php
$sometext = 'Hello my name is Neil';
$chars = 16;
$subtext = substr($sometext, 0, $chars);
echo $subtext.'.....';
?>

 

These are really common and simple php functions. I would recommend a basic reference book to assist you with anything small like the above that you need to do.

[geko21]

this was a post I did by mistake  ----  please read bellow

[geko21]

hi mate thanks for the help on the first problem this is what I have done

 

$date = $row->date_post;
$date = date('d<br />m<br />y', strtotime($date));
echo $date;

 

my table row with the dates in is called date_post so does this function look right becuase my result is looking like this

 

"170211"

 

but I need it to be

 

17

01

11

[JonnoTheDev]

<?php
$date = date('d-m-y', strtotime($row->date_post));
$date = implode('<br />', explode('-',$date));
echo $date;
?>

 

Dates in a mysql table should be stored in DATE type and not as strings in a VARCHAR. A proper date format is YYYY-MM-DD. You can then convert to UK format using PHP. PHP's date & time functions can become confused when using UK date format.

[geko21]

ah cheers buddy seems to be working a treat!

[xyph]

AVOID USING PHP'S DATE FUNCTION IF YOU CAN!

 

Use MySQL to solve this

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_date-format

 

SELECT DATE_FORMAT( `date_post`, '%d<br>%m<br>%y' ) as `date_formatted` FROM `table`

 

Then use $row->date_formatted

 

If you prefer neil.johnson's method, you can save a couple explode and implode calls by using

 

<?php
$date = date('d<br>m<br>y', strtotime($row->date_post));
echo $date;
?>