[Resolved] determining timestamp value

[perpetualshaun]

I was wondering if there is a way to tell if a value I pull in from MySQL is a timestamp or not?

The situation I'm in is that I want to give users the ability to type in a date freeform, such as 3/4/04 and write that to the ship_date field in MySQL. But then when the orders are actually shipped, write over that value w/ the appropriate timestamp.

So when I'm pulling ship_date w/ the other info from MySQL, is there some PHP function I can use to check that it's a timestamp instead of a freeform date?

[LordShryku]

Well, how are you storing it? MySQL timestamp or are you using a PHP timestamp?

[perpetualshaun]

I guess it is the PHP-based one. To tell you the truth, I don't know the difference. But when I am updating MySQL w/ what I'm referring to as the timestamp, I'm using a statement like this:

UPDATE orders SET ship_date='".time()."'

[LordShryku]

Then that makes it easy 🙂
[man]date[/man] has a second parameter for timestamp, so you can form it to look any way you want. So, for example, you can do this

echo date("m/d/Y H:i:s",$timestamp);

to check it...

[lazzerous]

This is dependant on what version of MySQL you are running.

I will assume you are running 4.1.x or higher

In MySQL 4.1.x, TIMESTAMP is returned as a string in the format 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'

to make sure that an entry is a mysql timestamp:

<?
// we'll just say that $timestamp holds the value pulled from MySQL
$timestamp = preg_split("/[\s-:]+/", $timestamp);

// this will create an array, seperating year, month, day, hour, minute, and second
// now all we need is an if statament to make sure that all elements are correct

if (
   sizeof($timestamp) == 6
   && 
   is_numeric($timestamp[0])
   &&
   strlen($timestamp[0] == 4
   && 
   is_numeric($timestamp[1])
   &&
   strlen($timestamp[0] == 2
   && 
   is_numeric($timestamp[2])
   &&
   strlen($timestamp[0] == 2
   && 
   is_numeric($timestamp[3])
   &&
   strlen($timestamp[0] == 2
   && 
   is_numeric($timestamp[4])
   &&
   strlen($timestamp[0] == 2
   && 
   is_numeric($timestamp[5])
   &&
   strlen($timestamp[0] == 2
   )
     {
     echo "This is a MySQL timestamp!<br>\n";
     }
else
     {
     echo "This is not a MySQL TimeStamp.<br>\n";
     }

?>