trying to loop a code - change date format from DD.MM.YY to YYYY/MM/DD

[superinterstellar]

Hi,

I am trying to loop a code(my php skills are not that great, so appreciate if someone here could help me walk through how to loop my code)

 

 

I have date input in the format as 21.03.15(DD.MM.YYYY) and would like to have it in 2015/03/21(YYYY/MM/DD) .

 

Note: I have a html textform that will get all the dates added to it , it will be in the following format:-

21.03.15

22.03.15

22.03.15

 

I would like it to come out as :

 

2015/03/21

2015/03/22

2015/03/22

 

Below is some things I came up with, but I cannot seem to come up with a looping logic. Appreciate if someone here could help me with the code below.

Thanks!

<?php

$var = "21.03.15" ;

echo $var;
echo "<br />";


$date = explode(".",$var);  // 
echo "20".$date[2].'/'.$date[1].'/'.$date[0];    


?>

[ginerjm]

Why do you need a loop? You have a date value and you changed it to the format you wanted without one. Why a loop? Perhaps you should show us the form?

[Barand]

If you are planning to store or process those converted dates, use YYYY-MM-DD instead of YYYY/MM/DD as that is the standard format.

$htmldate = '21.03.15';
$dt = DateTime::createFromFormat('d.m.y', $htmldate);
echo $dt->format('Y-m-d');                                //==> 2015-03-21

[superinterstellar]

the reason why i want to loop it because on the html form it will have all the dates coming in a straight line.

 

The html input(textarea) will go in like this:-

...

21.03.15

22.03.15

22.04.15

25.04.15

...

 

When the results are printed I need a break tag for each date that is printed out,

 

2015-03-21

2015-03-22

2015-04-22

2015-05-25

 

 

Hope this makes sense?

 

Thanks

Kevin

[gizmola]

PHP has date/datetime classes. They literally allow for any type of format you want. I'd suggest you start with those because they also provide the ability to do date arithmetic.

 

With that said, there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind your examples. What are these dates and where do they come from?

 

There is no way to show you a loop when we don't know what you're looping through!

[superinterstellar]

@gizmola

 

These are inputs from a html textarea input for dates in dd.mm.yy format. (It allows you to list all the dates you wish to convert. You have to list them all) . T

The reason why I am making this is because I have a colleague who has listed all his dates in excel in dd.mm.yyyy format and I want to convert them all into yyyy-mm-dd by copying all the dates and pasting them into the html textarea.

 

Then the php script will take all the dates listed and covert them one by one into YYYY-MM-DD format. After each date is converted it will have a break tag so that all the dates look in 1 orderly line.

 

I hope this makes more sense?

[Ch0cu3r]

When get the contents of the textarea you would use explode on the newline whitespace character to the dates on each line. You would then use foreach to loop over each date converting them using Barands example code

<?php

// if dates have been submitted
if(isset($_POST['dates']))
{
    // explode on the newline character to get the dates on each line
    $htmldates = explode("\n", $_POST['dates']);
    // loop through the dates
    foreach($htmldates as $htmldate)
    {
        // apply trim, to remove any whitespace
        $htmldate = trim($htmldate);
        // convert date to new format
        $dt = DateTime::createFromFormat('d.m.y', $htmldate);
        echo $dt->format('Y-m-d') . '<br />';
    }
}


?>

<form method="post">
    Dates:<br />
    <textarea name="dates" cols="30" rows="10"><?php echo (isset($_POST['dates']) ? $_POST['dates'] : ''); ?></textarea><br />
    <input type="submit" value="Convert" />
</form>

[superinterstellar]

@Chocu3r

Thanks a tonne!

Didnt know I culd explode as new lines!

Nor did I know about all the addtional useful functions.

Really appreciate it and hope you could advise on how to get better. I am a newbie here.

Any reading material or tutorial would be nice.

Thanks

Kevin