Date selection drop down box

[Jon7800]

Hello everyone,

Could someone help me with the most efficient way to write a date selection box, that would highlight the current date?

I want it to read:

Januray 31 2005 to the user. With the option of selecting out 3 years. I can't seem to figure it out to where I can have it automaticaly be on the current date. The only way I seem to be able to do it, is to have the current date be the top option box.

example:

<select name="startMonth">
<option value="<? echo"$month"; ?>"><? echo"$month"; ?></option>
<option value="January">January</option>
<option value="February">February</option>
<option value="etc...">etc...</option>

<select name="startDay">
<option value="<? echo"$day"; ?>"><? echo"$day"; ?></option>
<option value="01">01</option>
<option value="02">02</option>
<option value="etc...">etc...</option>

Of course this isn't really effiecient, for one it takes up a lot of lines of code, and for 2 if you don't want to use the current date, you still need to scroll through all the other options. I have a feeling there is a relatively simple way to do it with an array or something...

Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Jon

[daynah]

I wrote a quick function for you. But of course, you'll need to tweak this code a bit to make it more robust. For example, you might want to limit only 28 or 29 days for the month of Feburary. Maybe convert the month names back into numbers for more flexibility too. 🙂 Good luck!

Demo Example

Full Code (if it's too hard to read on the board)

<?

function selectCurrentDate($currentMonth, $currentDay)
{
	// Month Array
	$monthNames = array('January', 'Feburary', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', 
			  'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December');

// MaxNumber of days in a month (will need to write more robust code)
$maxDays = 31;

// Begin Month select menu
$display .= 'Select The Date: <select name="theMonth">';

// Loop through each month
foreach ($monthNames as $myMonth) 
{
	// If month is equal to $currentMonth passed in, select 
	if($currentMonth == $myMonth)
		$display .= '<option value="'. $myMonth .'" selected>' . $myMonth . '</option>';
	else
		$display .= '<option value="'. $myMonth .'">' . $myMonth . '</option>';
}

// end select	
$display .= '</select> ';

// Begin Day select Menu
$display .= ' <select name="theDay">';

// Loop through the max number of days
for($i = 1; $i < $maxDays; $i++)
{
	if($i == $currentDay)
		$display .= '<option value="'. $i .'" selected>'. $i.'</option>';
	else
		$display .= '<option value="'. $i .'">'. $i.'</option>';
}

$display .= '</select><br /><br />';

return $display;
}

// Test out the function
echo selectCurrentDate('March', 5);
echo selectCurrentDate('Feburary', 28);

?>

[Jon7800]

daynah,

Your code worked like a charm. Thank you very much.

I did manage to get mine to work using only numbers for the month. (which is not what I wanted).

Would there have been an easy way to convert just the month numbers into actual names? This is very minimal code to get the same results and would be easy to work with for February and what not. If you have time let me know! Thanks!!

-Jon

I used the following code:

<select name="month" id="month">
<option selected>Month</option>
<?php for ($month = 1; $month <= 12; $month++) { echo "<option"; if (date("n")==$month) {echo "

SELECTED";} echo ">$month</option>\n"; }?>
</select>

<select name="day" id="day">
<option selected>Day</option>
<?php for ($day = 1; $day <= 31; $day++) { echo "<option"; if (date("j")==$day) {echo " SELECTED";}

echo ">$day</option>\n"; } ?>
</select>

<select name="year" id="year">
<option selected>Year</option>
<?php $currentYear = date("Y"); for ($year = $currentYear; $year <= ($currentYear+2); $year++) {

echo "<option"; if (date("Y")==$year) {echo " SELECTED";} echo ">$year</option>\n"; }?>
</select>