Date conversion from string

dmoorehead

Hello everyone.

I have a very dumb question for you. I'm trying to convert a string that has been input from a form to a date in the format of, say, an Access database. Every time I do, I get errors that keep getting stranger and stranger. I've included the piece of code and the result below. Thank you for your help!

-Darren

-----------CODE--------------
echo $stadate;
echo " ";
echo $enddate;
echo " ";
echo gettype($stadate);
echo gettype($enddate);
echo " ";
echo " ";

$stadate=strtotime($stadate);
$enddate=strtotime($enddate);

$stadate=date('Ymd H:i','$stadate');
$enddate=date('Ymd H:i','$enddate');

echo $stadate;
echo " ";
echo $enddate;
echo " ";
echo gettype($stadate);
echo gettype($enddate);

------------RESULT-------------------

2147483647
2147483647
integerinteger

Warning: date() expects parameter 2 to be long, string given in D:\dbtsite\oncall2.php on line 70

Warning: date() expects parameter 2 to be long, string given in D:\dbtsite\oncall2.php on line 71

booleanboolean

I told you it was strange............

cheerio

$stadate=date('Ymd H:i','$stadate');
$enddate=date('Ymd H:i','$enddate');

should not have quotes. here it is revised:

$stadate=date('Ymd H:i',$stadate);
$enddate=date('Ymd H:i',$enddate);

dmoorehead

Thanks for the quick reply! Now it appears to be an even stranger error...

-----CODE----------
echo $stadate;
echo " ";
echo $enddate;
echo " ";
echo gettype($stadate);
echo gettype($enddate);
echo " ";
echo " ";

$stadate=strtotime($stadate);
$enddate=strtotime($enddate);

$stadate=date('Ymd H:i',$stadate);
$enddate=date('Ymd H:i',$enddate);

echo $stadate;
echo " ";
echo $enddate;
echo " ";
echo gettype($stadate);
echo gettype($enddate);

------RESULT--------
2147483647
2147483647
integerinteger

19691231 19:00
19691231 19:00
stringstring

cheerio

When you put dates into a database, it's better not to use DD-MM-YY. It's easier to put a unix timestamp.

strtotime() converts something like "10 September 2000" into a timestamp, which you can put into a database. It's much easier to use a timestamp, because afterwards you can display it in whatever format you want.

my explanations are not so good, sorry, but do a bit research on strtotime() and time(). Here is a simple code I just wrote that can probably be used for something like this:

Make a simple form with 3 values. One is day, another is month, and the last is year.

$day = $_POST['day'];
$month = $_POST['month'];
$year = $_POST['year'];

$timeStamp = strtotime("$day $month $year");

// Then later on you can use timeStamp with date()
echo date("YOUR DATE FORMAT",$timeStamp);

[/code]

dmoorehead

That would be a good idea, except for the past 2.5 years, we've used an Access database form where people were inputting the time normally, in non-unix scale. (as a background, this database is used as an on-call reporting database for my team where they record details about when called, by whom, reasons, etc...)

I just now recieved permission to install PHP on my server, and I am going to make their lives much easier (if I can get this to work).

Any thoughts on how to convert the thousands of records to unix time? Again, Thanks!

-Darren