php data formatting

chrisleon

I have an input box that a user will enter a date into it. I have placed in text that the format should be YYYY-MM-DD, but if the user decides not to follow this standard, how do I alert the user to this when trying to submit. I have found some javascript that does this, but I was hoping to stay away from that. If any ideas, please help.

thanx

toma42

If you really don't want to use javascript, you will need to verify the formatting server side. To do this, try this:

if ($date = strtotime($user_entered_date) < 0) {
die ("the date $user_entered_date is not valid");
}

// if you get here then $date is a unix timestamp and all is good.

chrisleon

I placed that code in the form handler with the correct variables, but I can put any date in there or even leave it blank, and it still will submit. Any ideas

djroki

As a simple solution, why not just use menu boxes to control user input.

Searate day, month (textual), year menus can be joined server-side and converted to a timestamp, or into the format you require.

There's a useful function I have which will both generate the form menus and process them the way you want. If you'd like me to post the code I'll be happy to but it's a bit lengthy and I didn't want to overwhelm anybody 😉

good luck, roki

sarahk

we do this all the time

<script language="javascript">
function nodate(dateVal)
{
  // javascript which identifies if the date is valid
  return true;
}
function checkme(fld)
{
var testDate = fld.value
if (nodate(testDate))
{
  fld.focus();
  return false;
}
else
{
  return true;
}
}//checkme
</script>
<input type='text' name='mydate' value='' onblur="checkme(this);">

one wee trap, I've found you can't set the focus back to itself from an onchange event, but you can with onblur

chrisleon

any help would be much appreciated

sarahk

By the way, you can edit your own posts, so don't add a new one or people will look and see that the post has 1 reply (even though it's just you) and not bother to open as help has already been given.