strtotime returning funky date

[jjfletch]

Hoping someone here can help me out....

I'm sure there's a better way to code this, and pointers would be greatly appreciated, but my immediate problem is figuring out how to return the correct date.

Upon retrieving $date1 from the database, I format it like so:

/* **** This will convert the DateTime from MySQL to this format: 25-Dec-05 **** */

$date1 = date("d-M-y", strtotime($row['Expiration_Date']));

/* **** But, I store the date in MySQL in a different format, so I do this to create a value for a hidden input field **** */

$date2 = date("Y-m-d h:i:s", strtotime($date1));

/* **** Users can select the number of days that want to increase the Expiration date by, so I tried this: **** */

$date3 = strtotime("1 day", $date2);

/* **** The above generates this: 88405, so I try to convert it back to Y-m-d: **** */

$date4 = date("Y-m-d h:i:s", strtotime($date3));

/* **** But that just returns: 2014-12-05 12:00:00 **** */

So, basically, Expiration_Date is stored in mysql as Y-m-d h:i:s. I want to retrieve this value and display it as d-M-y. Then, I want to be able to add X days to it, and convert it back to Y-m-d h:i:s before updated my database.

Can someone help me out here?

[bpat1434]

Well, you can simplify your code to be:

<?php

$date = strtotime($row['Expiration_Date']);

$date1 = strtotime("+1 day", $date);

echo date('m-d-Y H:i:s', $date).'<br>'.date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $date);
echo '<hr>';
echo date('m-d-Y H:i:s', $date1).'<br>'.date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $date1);

?>

Once you get the expiration to a timestamp, you can work with it and make it display however you want. As the above example shows, once it's a timestamp, you can output whatever date format you want, and then add/subtract any time to it.

You can also let mySQL do the timestamp conversion in the query like:

SELECT UNIXTIME(Expiration_Date) AS expiration, *
FROM table_name

Either way will work....

~Brett

[devinemke]

everything you are trying to do can (and should) be done with mySQL's Date and Time Functions. the fromatting of the date can be done with DATE_FORMAT() and the date adding can be done with DATE_ADD().

[jjfletch]

Thanks, I just did this:

        $date3 = strtotime("+5 days", strtotime($pexp_date));
        $date4 = date("Y-m-d h:i:s", $pexp_date3);           

[bpat1434]

While that works, just be aware there are other more efficient means to do it (like within the mySQL query) so as to lessen the work PHP has to do.

Glad you got it working though.

~Brett