Splitting a string. Converting back to drop down lists from database

ade234uk

I am creating a small calendar where a user selects the date and month from a drop down lists. They select a date from and then a date tpo. This then get converted to a string and inserted in to the database. This means we only need to use one field in the database.

Example selected from drop down lists:-
1 January 22 March

$datesrow1 = $date1 . $month1. $date2. $month2;

so $datesrow1 = 1 January 22 March

I want to be able to pull this information back from the database and back in to the drop down lists.

If someone filled in all the drop downs this is fine, I can place these variables back in to the drop down lists in the correct order, However what happens if someone only wants to enter the months instead of the dates like so.

January April

This means they would come back in the wrong order.
I hope you get what I mean.

Crowly

This is what i can think of from the top of my head.

Do a check to see if the dates are filled in before you do the insert, if they're not filled in, set them to 0. So when you pull the data from the db again you splitt up the fields again and do another check to see if the date is 0, and then handle it accordingly.
Something like this

if ($date1==NULL)
  $date1=0;
if ($date2==NULL)
  $date2 = 0;
$datesrow1 = $date1." ".$month1." ".$date2." ".$month2;

// -----

$x=explode(' ',$daterow1);
if ($x[0]==0)
  // handle the "empty" date1
if ($x[2]==0)
  // handle the "empty" date2

ade234uk

Using your idea I may have worked something out. So when I call these back to the drop down lists or form fields from the database they should be correctly inserted.

//Create a string
$datesrow1 = "1 January 31 December";

$getdates = explode(" ", $datesrow1);

if ($getdates[0] == 0)
{
echo "<input type=text name=box1 value=\"\">";
}
else
{
echo "<input type=text name=box1 value=\"" . $getdates[0] . ">";
}

It beats creating loads of fields in database.

edwardp

ade234uk wrote:
It beats creating loads of fields in database.

Harder to search ranges though

why not two fields from and to?

ade234uk

Can you please explain?
The reason I use four fields to begin with is so the dates look the same. I could like you say get them to enter a from and to date but then I have no control on what they type.

For instance one user may enter 1 January - 12 March
Then another user may enter 1January - 12August

If I allow them to select the date from a drop down menu and the month then everything is kept the same.

Is this what you mean?

edwardp

Well if you have to search the data at some point (might not be planned now but maybe in the future) you might want to search for same start dates. If the data is is one field in your databse you will have to do coding to split the string that is returned from the database (or you the sql substring functions) when really you could just search each field as required.

using your method will end up being a little more long winded....harder i think to write generic functions to cover all possibilities (varied string length of data etc etc) thats all. Also it just seems a littel more straightforward to have 2 fields for the dates or maybe even 4 fields to make searching even more simple ... if you havent planned for searching already...you might have to in the future and then find you have to change it all anyway

For instance one user may enter 1 January - 12 March
Then another user may enter 1January - 12August

how?? if theyre using drop down boxes?? you have control how the data is inputted into/taken from the databse njot the user

ade234uk

I will certainly take this in to consideration. I never thought of it this way. Sometimes it needs a bit of explaining.

Thank you for your help.

Crowly

Also it just seems a littel more straightforward to have 2 fields for the dates or maybe even 4 fields to make searching even more simple

If the to and from fields are stored as DATE its vey easy to work with, since a date field really is just a number (ex number of days since Jan 1st 1900). Dont really see the need for four fields, unless ive missed something 😉

So if you want to figure out the number of days between two dates all that is needed is $date2 - $date1 = X. Also if you want to increase the date by one day, you can simply do $date1 += 1;