Ugh! What Am I Missing?

rwilkerson

This is the simplest concept in programming, but for some reason I just can't get it to work. I'm querying a database for a record set that will either contain 1 record or 0 records. 1 of the fields in the record is a MySQL timestamp. Problem is, I can't seem to get the timestamp to display correctly. This is what I have:

Timestamp = 20020211192917
display code = echo date ( "d.M.Y", $last_update );
Result = 18.Jan.2038

Also, if the recordset returns 0 records (and last_update is, therefore, empty), the result is "31.Dec.1969". I can work around this, but I'd still like to know the cause.

I'm running PHP4 and MySQL 3.23 on a W2K box. The query I'm executing is being built in a string variable, so it chokes on any attempt to use MySQL date functions.

Any insight on how PHP handles dates would be greatly appreciated. Ultimately, I could get around this with a lot of conditionals, but it seems like there must be a more sophisticated way. I'm also trying to figure out what I can and can't do with PHP rather than just "make it work".

Thanks.

[deleted]

haven't you heard about unix era 🙂)
it started on 1.Jan.1970

unixtime is number of seconds passed since that date. and the date() function uses that concept. if your query returns Null date() tells you that there isn't such date = 31.dec.1969
i think you should use conditional to avoid that result 🙂

rwilkerson

Yeah, and I'm about to jump feet first into it. Well, the Linux world, anyway. <grin>

I didn't realize that no date (NULL) equalled 31.Dec.1969. It's kind of a strange way of representing something, but as long as I know about it I can account for it. I actually did try to test for empty, but got more crazy results:

Code: $last_update = !empty ( $rs['last_update'] ) ? date ( "d.M.Y", $rs['last_update'] ) : date ( "d.M.Y" );

Empty Result: as noted in last post instead of current date
When record is returned: 18.Jan.2038

I understand the significance of the latter result, but not the reason for receiving it.

Care to explain this one, too?

Thanks again for your help.