T_STRING Error

Radon3k

I swear this lil project is giving me a ton more problems that it's worth. All part of the learning I suppose. Anyways, onto the problem. I get a T_STRING error on a line where I'm trying to insert information into a database. Below is the query to the database.

<?php
if($_POST['submit'] == "Submit") {
	$insert = mysql_query("INSERT INTO topics SET
				title = '$topictitle',
				author = '$author',
				message = '$body',
				threaddate = date("l, F d, Y")");

if($insert) {
	echo("Topic added.");
} else {
	echo("Error adding topic.");
}
}
?>

Now title, author, message all exist as fields in a form I created. the date does not. Could this be causing the problem? Thanks for any help. 🙂

cahva

You have an error in your query. You cant add php functions like that inside the query.

Proper way:
threaddate = '".date("l, F d, Y")."'");

I would recommend though that you put the date in a proper format in the table. yyyy-mm-dd or timestamp. Remember that its easier to fetch specific rows from table when they are in a proper format.

Change the threaddate's type to date (or if you need the time also, datetime) and when you insert new row use this:

threaddate = NOW()");

Take a look at mysql's date and time functions

ir4z0r

use date('bla'), cause else PHP can't recognize the end of the query

or if you want ot use php's date()
use:
...='" . date("format") . "')";

Radon3k

I'm not sure what you mean by "timestamp" but the field in the db is set to date. I didn't realize that you couln't use functions like that. That's the problem I was having. Thanks for the help and information. 🙂

While I'm at it, and instead of forming a new thread, if you use the global declaration within a function does that variable you made global work inside other functions? Both are custom made.

jpmoriarty

timestamp is also know as a unix timestamp, and is basically the number of seconds that have elapsed since 1st jan 1970: you can get it by using

date("U");

in php.
the handy thing about it is that you can then use it to tell you what other dates are:

$timestamp = date("U") + (60*60*24*50);
// above timestamp is for today + 50 days
echo date("l, F d, Y",$timestamp);
//will echo out 50 days from now in required format

so when i have dates in a db i have the field type as a var char (11) (or a long int, can't remember), and then store timestamps in there since it gives me a lot more flexibility.