Best guess date from messy string.

[fatkatie]

Without writing a regx, is there a php function/library that will take a string and try and convert it to a date? PHP's date is not adequate.

 

For example, these are all "dates".  I would expect it to succeed on any of these.  On those that are ambiguous, there should be attribute that can be set like, expect year between 78 and 16.  This is strictly best guess, I do not supply a format.  Failure is expected.

 

feb 21, 1999

Feburary 21, 1999

02/21/99

2/21/99

99/2/21

2-21-1999

19990221

sun, Feb 21, 1999

Sunday Feburary 21, 1999

anything returned by a mysql date (now(), datetime ...)

Today's date is DATESTUFF

 

 

 

You get the idea.

 

Returns false on couldn't do it, and some array or seconds after N if successful.

 

Thank you.

[Barand]

Provided that you can spell "February", only two of those formats do not work

$dates = [  'feb 21, 1999',
            'February 21, 1999',
            '02/21/99',
            '2/21/99',
            '99/2/21',
            '2-21-1999',
            '19990221',
            'sun, Feb 21, 1999',
            'Sunday February 21, 1999'
            ];

echo '<pre>';
foreach ($dates as $dstr) {
    printf("%-30s%-15s%s\n", 
                $dstr, 
                date('Y-m-d', strtotime($dstr)),
                strtotime($dstr)==0 ? 'X' : ''
                );
}

Outputs

feb 21, 1999                  1999-02-21     
February 21, 1999             1999-02-21     
02/21/99                      1999-02-21     
2/21/99                       1999-02-21     
99/2/21                       1970-01-01     X
2-21-1999                     1970-01-01     X
19990221                      1999-02-21     
sun, Feb 21, 1999             1999-02-21     
Sunday February 21, 1999      1999-02-21     

For rogue formats you can always use DateTime::createFromFormat() Edited February 17, 2017 by Barand

[fatkatie]

It's easy then to intercept those two then.   I'll check the mysql output myself.  Thanks for a very nice presentation.  As for spelling, I can handle that too.  99% of the time it comes in a short feb.

[Barand]

Best way is to sidestep the problem and use a datepicker component. Then you are not at the mercy of whatever format a user wants to enter.