Help Me - Im Out of Date!

[PHP-Nut]

I wonder if anyone could help me, i recently wrote an appliacation for work, in PHP.

 

I have a form that captures customer details and a delivery date field.

 

I  used a pull down menu and filled this date field with the next 14 days..

capturing the date as text for example 'Wednesday - 21st - Nov 2007' and storing this in a mysql database, whereby quite a lot of pages pull data out using this date format by comparing dates again accessed from pull down menus..

 

But what i would like to do is make it more flexable and have a date picker so any date in the future could be added, not just within the next 14 days.

 

But how do i go about changing the date given by the datepicker usually something like '21/11/2007'

To The date format i store in my database?

 

Im sure there is a really easy way to do this in PHP?

 

Please Help Me

Paul.

 

 

 

[severndigital]

i've had to deal with this problem several times so I wrote a function to handle it.

 

$datetoparse = '21/11/2007';

function parseDate($datetoparse){

  $edate = explode("/",$datetoparse); //explodes the date into sections

       $month = $e[1];
       $day     = $e[0];
       $year   =  $e[2];

//now put it back together in the format you want.

   $result = "$year-$month-$day";

return $result;
}

 

the function should return this .. 2007-11-21

 

That should do it, you can switch around result to accommodate your format in the database.

 

you can add some validators if you want like ..

 

if($month is > 12){
  echo 'some error code here';
}

This would keep them from inputing the date the in wrong format.

 

 

 

[PHP-Nut]

Hi Thanks For that, But Is there a way to return the timestamp so i can use the date function?

 

To Make it easier on the Screen Operator ive included the Day/month etc ie.

 

'Wednesday - 21st - Nov 2007' <-------------- This is what my dateofdelivery field stores

 

so i need to go from 21/11/2007 to the above

 

Any Ideas?

 

Thanks for the help so far!

 

Paul.

 

[rajivgonsalves]

here you go

 

<?php
$str = 'Wednesday - 21st - Nov 2007';

$str = date("Y-m-d",strtotime(preg_replace("/^(\w)+|\-|  /", "", $str)));

echo $str; 

?>

[Psycho]

I think you are taking the wrong approach by storing the date in the DB in the format 'Wednesday - 21st - Nov 2007'. The 'date' field type in the DB is there for a reason. You can do calculations using a timestamp, but not on a text field. I would suggest using a date timestamp in the database, but using a function to present the date to the user in a friendly format.

[PHP-Nut]

Hi Again,

 

I need to go the other way around.. the date picker is going to supply the date as 21/11/2007

 

then i need to change that to 'Wednesday - 21st - Nov 2007'

 

ready to be stored in the database..

 

Once Again Thanks For Your Help

 

Paul.

[PHP-Nut]

I think you are taking the wrong approach by storing the date in the DB in the format 'Wednesday - 21st - Nov 2007'. The 'date' field type in the DB is there for a reason. You can do calculations using a timestamp, but not on a text field. I would suggest using a date timestamp in the database, but using a function to present the date to the user in a friendly format.

 

I agree, But i don`t need to do any calculations, It is purly Text.. No Different than Say storing their telephone number.. or Postcode.. It is just used to pull out data...

 

[rajivgonsalves]

here you go

 

<?php

$str = 'Wednesday - 21st - Nov 2007';

 

$str = date("d/m/Y",strtotime(preg_replace("/^(\w)+|\-|  /", "", $str)));

 

echo $str;

 

?>

 

read the date function on php.net

 

http://php.net/date

[PHP-Nut]

Hi, I know how to use the Date Function.. I just dont know how to get a timestamp from 21/11/2007?

 

???  ??? ???

 

Paul.

[rajivgonsalves]

Piece of cake here you go

 

<?php
$date = '21/11/2007';
$time =  strtotime(substr($date,-4)."-".substr($date,3,2)."-".substr($date,0,2));
print date("Y-m-d",$time);
?>

[PHP-Nut]

Thanks... Your A Star!