month types

[trex005]

If I store a month in a database as a number is there a way such as March 2001 would be 032001 is there a way I can pull that out and turn it into the string March 2001?

another option that may work but sounds harder to me is, if I could store it as the string and then be able to make a previous link change it to February 2001

Thank you
Travis Harris

[Anon]

Not sure if this is the easiest way of doing it but it should work:

First you will have to split up the string into the month and year (where $date is the 032001 string):

$month = substr( $date, 0, 2 );
$year = substr( $date, 2, 4 );

Next make a date using the fields:

$newdate = mktime( 12,0,0,$month,1,$year );

This will make the date for 12 noon on the first day of the month.

Lastly make the output string in the format that you want:

$output = date( "F Y", $newdate );

That should give yo a string that you can print which should be "March 2001".

You should be able to write a routine that subtracts one from $month if $month is greater than 1 otherwise make it 12 and subtract one from $year to give you the previous option. Then feed it into the mktime and date functions.

Hope that helps.