Taking Away From A Date

[dreampho]

Hi all.

 

Okay, so I have a date saved in UNIX format, so the date looks like this: 1346689843 - {start} is just my CMS variable.

 

I am trying to first convert the date to dmY format, then remove 14 days.

 

$date = date('dmY',strtotime("{start}"));
$due_date = strtotime('-14 day',strtotime($date));
$due_date = date('dmY',$due_date);
echo $date;
echo $due_date;

 

The $date variable displays 1/1/1970 which is the first day of the UNIX I think.

$due_date displays 18/12/1969

 

So the minus 14 days is working, just not the formatting for $date. How can I get the $date variable to format the date correctly? Am I making some stupid error here?

[ManiacDan]

The $date variable displays 1/1/1970 which is the first day of the UNIX I think.

You're trying to get the date of the string '{start}'. That's not a date. You can't just assume CMS variables will be replaced in random bits of PHP code, you need to use the actual date. Also, if '{start}' looks like '1346689843', you can't call strtotime on it.

 

If you have PHP 5.3+, use the datetime library for stuff like this.

 

[dreampho]

Okay, I have removed strotime and now $date is formatted correctly.

 

But I dont understand how to remove the 14 days off this. Could you possibily give me an example?

 

I have read in the php manual for datetime, but its throws an error when I try and use it. Again an example would be great.

 

Thank you

[ManiacDan]

Stop using formatted dates, only format dates when you're ready to display them, it's not smart to continuously re-format and parse formatted dates throughout your code.

 

 

php > $date = time();
php > $due_date = strtotime('-14 days', $date);
php > echo date('c', $due_date);
2012-09-17T11:05:44-04:00

only use date() when you output. PHP has no way of telling if 20121001 is a date stamp or a formatted date-time string.

[dreampho]

Thank you. I can see I was making it much more difficult than it needed to be.