Date Manipulation

[Esqulax]

Hey guys,

Im making a database that need to deal with dates, and im having trouble getting my head round figuring out how to do it..

may be a long one though...

Ok, so i want the user to be able to enter the date, in a select box style (3 boxes, D,M,Y),
Then save that date to the MySQL database.

I also need to to be able to add x amount of days to that date (again user defined)
and stick THAT date in the database aswell.

im using strtotime() for a different element of the site, where the date is incremented, and have a feeling thats the function i need to be using.

Any pointage in the right direction would be really appreciated!

[Habtom]

The key issue here could be the data type you set in the database. Timestamp could be very easy to manipulate or perform any of the actions you mentioned.

[phranque]

as habtom suggested i would use a canonical form, but i would suggest datetime (or just date) [dev.mysql.com] instead since timestamp has additional properties for initialization and update that you probably don't want.

[Esqulax]

I see what you mean.
Well... 1st things 1st...
I got this form:

Date:<input type="text" name="day" size="2" value="<?php echo date("d");?>">/
<input type="text" name="month" size="2" value="<?php echo date("m");?>">/
    <input type="text" name="year" size="2" value="<?php echo date("y");?>">

Which can take user imputted values (Im intending to pop an error correction thingy on it, so's the user cant enter the 42nd of the 84th)

how can i concatenate (yeah, big word :p ) "day", "month", and "year" in such a way, sos i can just save it?

would it be like...
(pseudocode)

$fulldate = $day + $month + $year

then

insert into table (userdate) values (\"$fulldate\");

[Esqulax]

double post..Sorry!

[edited by: Esqulax at 11:47 am (utc) on Jan. 21, 2008]

[Habtom]

Upon submission:

$day = $_REQUEST['day'];
$month = $_REQUEST['month'];
$year = $_REQUEST['year'];

Something like the following can do it:

$fulldate = $day."-".$month."-".$year ;

[phranque]

paraphrasing from the above linked reference:

You can specify DATETIME, DATE, and TIMESTAMP values using any of a common set of formats:
- As a string in either 'YYYY-MM-DD' or 'YY-MM-DD' format. A “relaxed” syntax is allowed here, too. For example, '98-12-31', '98.12.31', '98/12/31', and '98@12@31' are equivalent.
- As a string with no delimiters in either 'YYYYMMDD' or 'YYMMDD' format, provided that the string makes sense as a date. For example, '19970523' and '970523' are interpreted as '1997-05-23', but '971332' is illegal (it has nonsensical month and day parts) and becomes '0000-00-00'.

therefore i would suggest reversing the concatenation order...

[Esqulax]

Sweet,

although, i set my SQL table type to DATE, and, showed a lil mod i needed to make:

$fulldate = $year."-".$month."-".$day ;

Cos the database stores it as YYYY-MM-DD

Right.. adding said amount of days...
$date_2 = mktime(0,0,0,0,date("d")+."$extra_days",0);

then add date_2 to my oh so lovely database...does that look right?

::EDIT::
got there while i was typing phranque :p

[edited by: Esqulax at 12:11 pm (utc) on Jan. 21, 2008]

[Esqulax]

Hiya, back again!

im getting some odd results, and im not sure why...

I have my form as above for getting the dates from the user, the variables being called

&day, $month,$year.

i then have

$arr_timestamp = mktime(0,0,0,$year,$month,$day);

So it'll be easier to strtime it and add the user-defined days.

when testing i did

echo(' '.$arr_timestamp);

and get1627776000 as the result.

any Ideas?

[Esqulax]

Ok, silly me....

$arr_timestamp = date('d-m-y',mktime(0,0,0,$month,$day,$year));
allows the users inputted to be made to a unix timestamp

$dep_timestamp = date('d-m-y', strtotime("+{$extra_days} day"));

Makes a timestamp +1 day. BUT thats for TODAYS timestamp, now im trying to work out how to minus 1 day from arr_timestamp

[edited by: Esqulax at 2:54 pm (utc) on Jan. 21, 2008]

[HELLvin]

seems like ur using mktime with the wrong arguments (wrong order)
mktime ( int $hour , int $minute , int $second , int $month , int $day , int $year [, int $is_dst ] )

[Esqulax]

Ok, in case anyone is following this, and is using it.. heres what i ended up doing:

I wanted to have the user enter a date and a number of days. i then wanted to add the number of days to the date entered.

My basis is "booking a hotel room"

$arrival is the arrival date, the user puts in. this is in a nice and view friendly format.
$formatstamp re-shuffles it a bit to make it "unix timestamp happy"

this works, but if theres a better way of doing this, feel free to let me know!

<!-- Date and legnth of stay-->
Date:
    <input type="text" name="day" size="2" value="<?php echo date("d");?>">/
<input type="text" name="month" size="2" value="<?php echo date("m");?>">/
    <input type="text" name="year" size="2" value="<?php echo date("y");?>">
 <?php 
 
//concatanate the inputted values, and format
$fulldate= $year."-".$month."-".$day ;
    $arrival = date('d-m-y',mktime(0,0,0,$month,$day,$year));
//format the arrival dates to a timestamp
$formatstamp = date('y-m-d',mktime(0,0,0,$month,$day,$year));
$arr_timestamp = strtotime($formatstamp);
?>
 
 <br><br>
 
 Number of nights:    <input type="text" name="nights" size="2" value="1">
 
 <?php 
 
//adding nights staying to the timestamp
 $dep_timestamp = date('d-m-y', strtotime("+{$nights} day", $arr_timestamp));?>