Converting a date to unix timestamp

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Converting a date to unix timestamp

nfs2

9:24 pm on Apr 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

I have a form where people enter their birthday_day, birthday_month, and birthday_year

Is there a way to do the following;

convert_this_to_unix_timestamp($_POST['birthday_day'], $_POST['birthday_month'], $_POST['birthday_year']);

The point is that if i store it as a unix_timestamp, then i can do some math on it and return the users age instead of their birthday

adb64

9:28 pm on Apr 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

Take a look at the strtotime function, [php.net...]

Arjan

mikesmith76

9:34 pm on Apr 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

mktime() can also do what your asking, just pass the required parameters and your done

nfs2

4:03 am on Apr 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

Thanks, strtotime worked for me, except i have another problem.

Since im using this function for displaying a members age, if they are over 36 it will cause problems (becuase unix timestamp starts at 1970, so if someone was born before that, it returns a negative value, and my function calculates that. So if someone was born in 1960, my function says they are 10 years old.)

Here is my function

//put the post info into a string
   $day = $_POST['birthday_day'];
   $month = $_POST['birthday_mon'];
   $year = $_POST['birthday_yr'];
   $age = strtotime(''.$day.' '.$month.' '.$year.'');//now the function
function getAge($seconds) {
$now = time(); 
$then = $seconds;
$elapsed_time = $now - $then; 
$one_year = '31556926';
$age = floor($elapsed_time / $one_year);
return $age;
 } //pass the variable through the function
$years_old = getAge($age);

It works great if the user is below 36, but if they are 37, there age will be displayed as 1+ for every year before 1970. So if they were born in 1965, they would be 5 years old.

Is there a simple tweak to my function that'll make this work, or is there something other then a unix timestamp i should use?

omoutop

10:59 am on Apr 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

Taken directly from manual:

<?php
function get_age($dob_stamp)
{
$dob = getdate($dob_stamp);
$now = getdate(time());
$age = $now['year'] - $dob['year'];
$age-= (int)($now['mon'] < $dob['mon']);
$age-= (int)(($now['mon'] == $dob['mon']) && ($now['mday'] < $dob['mday']));
return $age;
}
?>

Hope this helps (you can find many more in online manual under mktime examples)

nfs2

11:57 am on Apr 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

Thanks, i've read the mauals and many examples online. That example, like my own function, will not work with dates before 1970.

I've decided to not use a unix timestamp, and am now using another function to calculate age.

coopster

6:18 pm on Apr 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

I have found that using the UNIX timestamp and the related epoch issues are often too much to deal with. It is easier to use simple math to calculate age. This little function is lightweight and does the job quite nicely. I've thrown down a small sample of how it handles dates:

function calcAge($d) { 
 list [php.net]($by, $bmd) = explode [php.net]('-', $d, 2); 
 list($ty, $tmd) = explode('-', date('Y-m-d'), 2); 
 return $ty - $by - (($tmd < $bmd)? 1 :0); 
} 
list ($yyyy, $mm, $dd) = explode('-', date('Y-m-d')); 
$yyyy -= 50; 
$Person1 = "$yyyy-$mm-" . (sprintf [php.net]('%02d', $dd - 1)); 
$Person2 = "$yyyy-$mm-" . (sprintf('%02d', $dd + 0)); 
$Person3 = "$yyyy-$mm-" . (sprintf('%02d', $dd + 1)); 
?>

<html> 
$Person1 Birthdate = '<?php print $Person1;?>'; // Age is <strong><?php print calcAge($Person1);?></strong> years old!<br /> 
$Person2 Birthdate = '<?php print $Person2;?>'; // Age is <strong><?php print calcAge($Person2);?></strong> years old!<br /> 
$Person3 Birthdate = '<?php print $Person3;?>'; // Age is <strong><?php print calcAge($Person3);?></strong> years old!<br /> 
</html>

You'll find that it can calc ages going back many years just fine. Go ahead, change the $yyyy -= to 500 and see ;)
You'll have to add your own edit checking, etc. to make sure you have a valid date before you pass it to this function. And the function expects the date in ISO format:

yyyy-mm-dd