date( ) troubles

phast

I am stamping a page with the date in format
'$date = date("M j Y g:i a");' The string is then passed as a hidden variable to the script that dumps $date and others into the db. My problem is the $date is cut to just "Jan" when inserted into the database.
I was able to submit the string with no spaces in the format.

How can I format date( ) using the above format and keep the spaces, so that I can pull it out of the database and make it look pretty on a page?

Thanks
-phast

Anon

What field type to you have for the date-field in your DB? I prefer storing timestamps in the database and format dates on the fly when I print them. This way I can easily change my date format without having to cut/copy/paste in the date string.

Johan

phast

Datatype is 'text'. I displayed the string on my form to use as the unique ID for my database and to sort entries by. I am just trying to figure out how to keep it from truncating the date to "jan" or whatever.

watski

Strange, it shouldn't. Have you any code you can show?

Johan

phast

You bet --

<newsform.php>

$date = date("M j Y g:i a");
echo $date; ?>
<form method=post action="addnews.php">

Then it goes onto accept subject and story for news and submits it to addnews.php

<addnews.php>

$sql = "insert into $table_name (subject, date, content) values
(\"$subject\", \"$date\", \"$content\")";

<p>date:<br>
<? echo "$date"; ?></p>

Hope that will help you get an idea of what's going on. I wish I could point you to a URL but we are having a hard time getting PHP4 to compile on the Linux server. All development is being done on a wintel box with PHPtriad.

-jay

phast

On another train of thought, I could print the date string formatted the way I want on newsform.php and then assign a native date and timestamp format to another variable that would be submitted to addnews.php and then into the database.

Can you give me any kind of direction on how to get it into a datatype(such as timedate) in the mysql database and then format it later as I pull it out of the database?

This is what you had suggested earlier I think.

-jay

Anon

was it a first date?

watski

I think I found your error. You need quotes around the value below or it will be truncated to eg ."Jan".

What I do when I don't get the result I want when posting forms is to dump the contents of the global vectors $HTTP_GET_VARS or $HTTP_POST_VARS. If you did, you would probably find that the date was truncated from the form. Try the code below. Call it with eg. DumpVars("HTTP_GET_VARS");

// Dump variables in the global vector $vectorName (ie. HTTP_GET_VARS)
function DumpVars($vectorName)
{
global $$vectorName;
$odd = false;
echo "<table border='0' cellpadding='1' cellspacing='0'>\n";
echo "<tr>\n";
echo "<td background='' bgcolor='#444499'>\n";
echo "<table border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0'>\n";
echo "<tr>\n";
echo "<td background='' bgcolor='#AAAAAA' colspan='2'><b>";
echo "Number of vars in $vectorName : ".count($$vectorName);
echo "</b></td>\n";
echo "</tr>\n";
if (count($$vectorName) > 0)
for (reset($$vectorName); $key = key($$vectorName); next($$vectorName)) {
if ($odd)
$color = "#CCCCCC";
else
$color = "#EEEEEE";
$vec = $$vectorName;
echo "<tr>\n";
echo "<td background='' bgcolor='$color'><b>$key</b>  </td>\n";
if (strlen($vec[$key]) == 0)
$str = "<i>none</i>";
else
$str = $vec[$key];
if (is_array($str)) {
$str2 = "Array: ";
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($str); $i++) {
$str2 .= " $i:<i>".$str[$i]."</i>";
}
$str = $str2;
}
echo "<td background='' bgcolor='$color'>".$str."</td>\n";
echo "</tr>\n";
$odd = !$odd;
}
echo "</table>\n";
echo "</td>\n";
echo "</tr>\n";
echo "</table>\n";
echo "<br><br>\n";
}

Timestamps works like this:

$timeStamp = time();
echo $timeStamp."<br>";
$date = date("M j Y g:i a", $timeStamp);
echo $date;

It would print something like

978777281
Jan 6 2001 11:34 am

Johan

phast

Ahhh.. duh! That did it. Thanks for your help.