Custom Date

SFDonovan

I have a module I am working on that revolves around our Call of Duty clan. I have made a member profile page that in two of the cells I want to display Time in Service (TIS), and Time in Grade (TIG).

TIS is time served from date of enlistment which in the roster_members table is enlistment_dt to todays date or Getdate() and properly formated into something like 1 year 3 months.

TIG is time served from last promotion which in the roster_members is promotion_dt to GetDate() and formated to 6 months or whatever length of time from the members last promotion.

The code to display TIS is as follows:

<td width=\"12%\" align=\"right\">" 
  . "                     <b><font color=\"#660033\">Time in Service:</font></b>" 
  . "                  </td>" 
  . "                  <td width=\"15%\" colspan=\"2\">" 
  . "                     <p class=\"content\">$info[tis]" 
  . "                  </td>"

Displaying TIG is identical to TIS.

How could I get this done? With a function?

If anybody has any good ideas or could lead me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

biggus

check out the date() function and the math part in particular. You should be able to get the number of days or months between 2 dates...today and your value for enlistment_dt. Then just do some more math and get the years and months.

This guy has a function to do it already built:

http://aidan.dotgeek.org/lib/?file=Duration.php

Good luck

SFDonovan

Hey...nice find.

I hope I can use this. So Duration.php is a class that I could use?

A little over my head, but I hope to figure it out.

Does a class always return a value like a function?

class Duration (enlistment_dt)
return $time

$TIS = $time

How or where would I call this?

<td width=\"12%\" align=\"right\">" 
  . "                     <b><font color=\"#660033\">Time in Service:</font></b>" 
  . "                  </td>" 
  . "                  <td width=\"15%\" colspan=\"2\">" 
  . "                     <p class=\"content\">$info[tis]" 
  . "                  </td>" 
  . "                  <td width=\"15%\" align=\"right\">" 
  . "                     <b><font color=\"#660033\">Time in Grade:</font></b>" 
  . "                  </td>" 
  . "                  <td width=\"46%\" colspan=\"3\">" 
  . "                     <p class=\"content\">$info[tig]" 
  . "                  </td>"

biggus

actually, nevermind that Duration class. You got me curious, so I searched and coded and came up with the following:

$newestDate="November 11, 2003";
$oldestDate="August 10, 2002";

$daysElapsed=round((strtotime($newestDate) - strtotime($oldestDate))/(60*60*24)-1);
$yrsElapsed=floor($daysElapsed/365);
$monthsLeftOver=floor(($daysElapsed-($yrsElapsed*365))/30);
echo "<HR>Years:".$yrsElapsed." months:".$monthsLeftOver;

This produces:

Years:1 months:7

It's easier to implement. It doesn't matter which format you use for the date. It could be 2004-11-08 or 11/11/2004. the strtotime() function takes care of that. The -1 at the end of the $daysElapsed line excludes the current day (or the start day, depending on how you look at it). Take that out and Nov 11th to Nov 11th is one year, as opposed to 364 days as it comes out to now.

Let me know how it works for you.

Biggus

Erestar

Does a class always return a value like a function?

If you're going to use this Duration object, you'll need to understand a few OOP things.

In this case, Duration is used statically, which means you never actually create an instance of a Duration. In other words, you'll never do $dur = new Duration() or anything. If you don't understand that, don't worry. In this case, you can think of a static object as just a group of functions logically piled together. The Duration object mentioned just has nice functions, like int2array() and toString(). Just look at his example on how to use them. Basically you're just calling functions but need to append Duration:: in front of the calls. This just means Access Duration and call the static method int2array() or whatever.

So, what you'll do is something like this, assuming that enlistment_dt is a Unix timestamp:

$dur = time() - enlistment_dt;
$breakDown = Duration::int2array($dur);

Then you can check the various values and display it how ever you want.

Hope that helps.

Erestar

SFDonovan

Originally posted by biggus
actually, nevermind that Duration class. You got me curious, so I searched and coded and came up with the following:
$newestDate="November 11, 2003";
$oldestDate="August 10, 2002";

$daysElapsed=round((strtotime($newestDate) - strtotime($oldestDate))/(60*60*24)-1);
$yrsElapsed=floor($daysElapsed/365);
$monthsLeftOver=floor(($daysElapsed-($yrsElapsed*365))/30);
echo "<HR>Years:".$yrsElapsed." months:".$monthsLeftOver;
[/B]

For this to always reflect the actual time is service could I use

$newestDate = Getdate();

Should I be using the unix timestamp as my data type or just date.

Erestar

I think in general you'll find that using a timestamp will offer way more flexibility.

I'm in the habit of just using a mediumint as the column type in the database, though mysql probably has a better way.

Erestar

biggus

I was thinking you were getting both dates out of a db, sorry. You can use mktime(localtime()) or strtotime(date("M d, Y")) to set $newestDate. You could use the getdate() function, too, just remember to set a variable to hold the array it produces:

$tmp=getdate();
//[0] holds the timestamp
$newestDate=$tmp[0];

SFDonovan

Thanks Guys,

You both have been a huge help.

I only have the enlisted_dt in the db, as well as the promotion_dt but I'll need a way to define the current date. I'll probably use the timestamp and use:

$tmp=getdate(); 
//[0] holds the timestamp 
$newestDate=$tmp[0];

method.