List major American holidays on Calendar

[sarah]

Total longshot...

I am creating a dynamic calendar and I need to put the major American holidays on it. It wouldn't be an issue except for the floating holidays like Thanksgiving, etc that take place on a certain day of the week instead of an exact date. Has anyone dealt with this issue before? What did you do?

[ereptur]

Wow, there's got to be a better way then this, but here goes:

Since holidays occur within the same four day span each year, you could find the date for the beginning of the span and then see if it falls on the required day.

For example, this year Thanksgiving is on the 27th; the earliest possible date is the 25th (I think).

You would go to the 25th and see if it lands on a Thursday. If not, step to the 26th and test it... keep going until it does.

Like I said, this has got to be just about the worst way to do it, but it's the best I can come up with.😕

[sarah]

Yoiks...that's what I was afraid of...Thanks so much for your response. This is the best I could come up with. The example is for memorial day which is celebrated on the last monday of may...

<?
$lastMondayDifference=abs(date("w",mktime(0,0,0,05,31,$viewYear))-1);
$memorialDate=date("Y-m-d",mktime(0,0,0,05,31-$lastMondayDifference,$viewYear));
?>

If you can see of a way to make it nicer, please let me know and thanks again for your help.

[sarah]

PS...a friend just turned me on to easter_date() which takes care of one of the functions...Unfortunately I couldn't find any other functions like that.

[fikse]

this should do it:

http://abledesign.com/programs/holiday_code.php