Textbox to Date

[KrisCons]

Hi all,

hopefully a simple one.

I have a text box, which I want the user to be able to type a date of birth into e.g. (01/01/05).

How to I convert this entry so it sucessfully enters into my database as 2005-01-01?

if (isset($_POST['submit'])) {

$dateofbirth = $_POST[dob];

}

I have checked out the date() funtion on php.net but i thinkI'm looking at the wrong function..

Thanks in advance.

[xblue]

if you expect them to use the format 01/01/05 (is that supposed to be dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy?), you might use

explode('/', $_POST['dob'])

to get the different parts, and simply put them in correct order to be inserted into the database.

but: with one textfield they are free to use 01.01.05 or whatever (by accident or on purpose), so you'd probably either split the textfield to 3 separate fields (or even selects), or very carefully validate the date (see checkdate())

[xblue]

correction: even before using checkdate (which may still be useful later to validate the date exists) you'd probably should make sure the explode command returned what you expected.

[Frederick]

My suggestion is to use 3 fields and limit to 2 characters per field.
Then, in the background, combine the three fields using the format you choose.

[laserlight]

I second Frederick's suggestion.
You'll still need to validate the incoming data, of course, but checking strlen() with ctype_digit() might be sufficient.