CODEWITHSUNDEEP
php
user1334653
user1334653

Reputation:

Format datetime from input string

I'm doing a date search filter where I have my date displayed as "j.n.Y G:i (26.6.2012 15:22)". A user can enter the whole date or only a portion of it: "26.6","6.2012","6","15:22" are all valid inputs. Because I need to check this date in the database the format needs to be changed to the one of the database. For that I use: 

$datum = '25.6.2012';
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('j.n.Y',$datum);
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i');

Where I get an error if $datum is not in the format j.n.Y (if I only enter j.n or one of the above mentioned string portions i get an error).

A problem is also, for the entered string 'j.n.Y', i get the right output of the date, which also has the current time added to the date string (which was not in the initial date string). Example: I enter "22.6.2012", then I get the output "2012-06-22 15:33".

Can these two problems get fixed with existing php functions or should I make my own?

Help would be greatly appreciated.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2520

Answers (2)

Jon
Jon

Reputation: 437366

For the first problem, you will need to write some code of your own because some of your acceptable inputs are not among the recognized input formats. Normalizing the input value will require you to fully parse it (a regular expression is a good way to start), and then you can call DateTime::createFromFormat without trouble.

For the second problem, putting an exclamation mark ! at the beginning of your format string would fix the time issue. From the documentation:

If format contains the character !, then portions of the generated time not provided in format, as well as values to the left-hand side of the !, will be set to corresponding values from the Unix epoch.

The Unix epoch is 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.

However, since you are going to need to fully parse the input as mentioned above the matter is moot. Also note that the exclamation mark would cause missing values for year, month and day to use defaults that are probably undesirable.

Upvotes: 0

nickb
nickb

Reputation: 59699

You can list your acceptable data formats in an array, and loop around DateTime::createFromFormat() to see if any of the inputs produce an acceptable date:

$formats = array( 'j.n', 'j.n.Y');
$datum = '25.6.2012'; $date = false;

foreach( $formats as $format) {
    $date = DateTime::createFromFormat( $format, $datum);
    if( !($date === false)) break;
}

if( $date === false) {
    echo "Invalid date!\n";
}

Finally, if you want to get rid of the current time in the newly created object and set the time to 00:00:00, just use the setTime() method on the date object:

// Sets the time to O hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds
$date->setTime( 0, 0, 0);

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions