strtotime() and final Sunday

Stinger51

I'm trying to use strtotime to find the final Sunday in October. But there is no "final" parameter for this function. So I did this instead :

$ts = mktime(0, 0, 0, 10, 1, 2003);
$theDate = strtotime("fifth Sunday", $ts);
echo "<br>Fifth Sunday = " . date("n, d", $theDate);

Interestingly enough, using PHP 4.3, this produces

"11, 01"

which is the First Saturday in November. This is probably due to the DST switchover bug that still exists in the function. Ok, I can live with that for right now.

So, my approach to getting the final Sunday in October will be to check the month that comes back. And if it's > 10, then I will use

$theDate = strtotime("fourth Sunday", $ts);

instead, which gives the correct date as 10, 26. Or does anybody have a better method of getting the final Sunday (or any day) in the month?

YappyDog

Just a note, your "fourth Sunday" logic will not work for November as it has 5 Sundays. Your logic for October is probably failing because it only has 4 Sundays and is trying to return November 2nd.

tekky

this should work...

//feed it a timestamp as $ts, it takes the END of that month and find the last sunday
function last_sunday($ts = time()) //current timestamp will be used if non specified
{
//lets get the timestamp for the last day of the month that this timestamp fall under
     $last_date = strtotime(date('t-M-Y', $ts));
//get what day of the week the last day of said month is...
     $last_day = date('w', $last_date);

 if ($last_day > 0) //if > 0, its not sunday... so strtotime to last sunday
 {
      return strtotime('last sunday', $last_date);
 }
 else //last_day == 0 so, its Sunday as the last of month... return that timestamp
 {
      return $last_date;
 }
}

Stinger51

But that's why I do the "fifth Sunday" test first. So, for November, I get back :

11, 30.

And PHP 4.3 is reporting the "fifth" Sunday in October as :

11, 01

which is a Saturday, and not 11, 02, as it should be. My guess is this bug has something to do with the transition from DST to standard time, not sure.

As an alternate scheme, I've thought of doing something like :

$FinalSunday = mktime (0,0,0,10,1,2003), date("d")+25, date("m"));

which should bring be out to Oct. 26. Question is, how to know to add 25 days to Oct. 1? I suppose some algorithym could be worked out for that, add 24 for Thursday, 23 for Friday, 22 for Saturday, etc.

But using this scheme for November, 2003, would result in the last Sunday in November as being Nov. 23, so back to the drawing board. 🙁

tekky

Originally posted by Stinger51
.....But using this scheme for November, 2003, would result in the last Sunday in November as being Nov. 23, so back to the drawing board. 🙁

did you try my example? you didnt comment on it... 😉

[edit - betting you didnt see it since you typed such a long reply :p]

Stinger51

Originally posted by tekky
did you try my example? you didnt comment on it... 😉

[edit - betting you didnt see it since you typed such a long reply :p]

= = =

I just tried it out and it works fine, thanks. Of course, I'll want to verify that it works for every month, so a little more testing is in order. 🆒

Also, I had to alter the function slightly, as it did not like "time()" in the parameter list. Not sure why. I have to figure out some other way to make the function accept other than the current date.

function LastSunday()
{
$ts = time();

// lets get the timestamp for the last day of the month that this timestamp fall under

 $last_date = strtotime(date('t-M-Y', $ts));

// get what day of the week the last day of said month is...

 $last_day = date('w', $last_date); 

 if ($last_day > 0) //if > 0, its not sunday... so strtotime to last sunday 
 { 
      $rst = strtotime('last sunday', $last_date);
      return date(j, $rst);			   
 } 
 else // last_day == 0 so, its Sunday as the last of month... return that timestamp 
 { 
      return date(j, $last_date); 
 }

}

So it now returns the numeric day of the month, e.g. 26 for October.

Thanks again!

tekky

No problem, here's a revision for you 🙂

function LastSunday($ts = -1) 
{
if ($ts == -1)
{
     $ts = time();
}

// lets get the timestamp for the last day of the month that this timestamp fall under 

 $last_date = strtotime(date('t-M-Y', $ts)); 

// get what day of the week the last day of said month is... 

 $last_day = date('w', $last_date); 

 if ($last_day > 0) //if > 0, its not sunday... so strtotime to last sunday 
 { 
      $rst = strtotime('last sunday', $last_date);
      return date('j', $rst);			   
 } 
 else // last_day == 0 so, its Sunday as the last of month... return that timestamp 
 { 
      return date('j', $last_date); 
 } 
}

that may work for inputing timestamps into the function rather than using time() inside to default the values.... (if you want that functionality that is)