Darn Date variable, can't figure it out

kingsol

I have looked at all of the date threads and tried each one and cannot get my date to display properly.

I have a variable $date=20021114
This is stored in a MySQL database. On the same page I call the variable $date (not pulled from the database but still simply a variable) Like so:

date("l, F j, Y", $date);

No matter what I do, I have tried strtotime(), a couple of other ways. to no avail. I get Thursday, August 20, 1970 everytime. Any Suggestions.

Thanks

scnjl

Originally posted by kingsol
I have looked at all of the date threads and tried each one and cannot get my date to display properly.

I have a variable $date=20021114
This is stored in a MySQL database. On the same page I call the variable $date (not pulled from the database but still simply a variable) Like so:
date("l, F j, Y", $date);
No matter what I do, I have tried strtotime(), a couple of other ways. to no avail. I get Thursday, August 20, 1970 everytime. Any Suggestions.

Thanks [/B]

set $date's property is varchar(20)
then save $date is timestamp
pull from the database the $date,use
$date = date("l, F j, Y", $date);

Weedpacket

Originally posted by scnjl

set $date's property is varchar(20)

Better yet, store the timestamp (an integer) as an integer in the database. Four bytes per record instead of twenty, and you can use MySQL's arithmetic functions and sort them as integers.

kingsol

Is it possible to change the variable to display the date correctly (as shown above) with out querying the database again? I would like to just use the same variable I used to insert the data in to the database.

It inserts fine, its displaying the information I have problems with.

Thanks for your help.

Weedpacket

(There's not a huge amount of point in being able to insert data in a database if you can't get it out again.... 🙂)

I understand MySQL has a bunch of SQL functions for formatting MySQL timestamps in various ways when you select them. Alternatively, PHP's various string-handling functions can break the date string that MySQL calls a timestamp into pieces which you can then use in a mktime() call to convert into a more conventional timestamp.

mjlively

There are a couple of ways you can do it without changing the database.

The first way is changing the way you query the date out of the db. To do it this way just change the query statement to something of this nature (Note: Field names probably aren't right since I don't know much about your script)

$query = "SELECT DATE_FORMAT(the_date, '%W, %M %e, %Y') as the_date FROM table";

The second way is just using php to format it

$date = mktime(0, 0, 0, substr($date, 4, 2), substr($date, 6, 2), substr($date, 0, 4));

For more info on the MySQL date functions go here: http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/bychapter/manual_Reference.html#Date_and_time_functions

Weedpacket

Basically what I said twenty minutes earlier...🙂

mjlively

When I have no work to do I like to re-iterate and elaborate 🙂.

Check out my post on array keys....I need advice