[RESOLVED] php date help

jdc44

I have a date field coming out of a MySql database from a query. I need to know how to get the year, month, and day portions of this date field. I select * from a table. The date field is one column, update_date. I cannot use functions like select year(update_date) in my query. I need to parse out the day, month and year in a different part of my code.

If I have $rowData['update_date'] that is a date like " 2007-12-12".

Note: $rowData['update_date'] is a date not a string.

list($y,$m,$d) = split('-', $rowData['update_date']); // doesn't work 'cause it is not a string.

Thoughts???

suntra

Well in MySQL it is a date, but in PHP, according to my knowledge, it will be interprated as a string...

I tried you code...

$date = '2007-12-12';
list($y,$m,$d) = split('-', $date);

And it worked. Of course, in this case, it was a string...

But the type of a variable, in PHP, should be one of these...

"boolean"

"entier"

"double"

"string"

"array"

"object"

"resource"

"NULL"

Installer

jdc44 and suntra -

The date types in mysql can be either string data (e.g. '2006-07-31') or number data (e.g. 20060731). "String" and "number" are not, strictly speaking, data types. So $rowData['update_date'] is both a DATE and a string.

PHP is a loosely typed language, so you could pass either format to split() or explode() or any function that can logically operate on it. The data is implicitly cast, as needed.

MySQL Data Types
PHP Types

NogDog

jdc44 wrote:
...I cannot use functions like select year(update_date) in my query....

Why not? (I do hope that your storing dates as date type fields and not as strings?) That would be a simple solution, and possibly the most efficient, too.

SELECT *, YEAR(update_date) as update_year, MONTH(update_date) AS update_month,
DAYOFMONTH(update_date) AS update_day FROM ... <etc.> ...

liquorvicar

Or else, pass the date to PHP's strtotime() function to create a unix timestamp and then use PHP's date() function to get the required bits...

jdc44

Thanks, It works...

$tmp_year = date('y', strtotime($record['update_date]));

I guess I was caught up in thinking the db field was a date-field so I couldn't use strtotime(). Huh!! Kicking myself now for not trying it when it crossed my brain.

list( $y, $m, $d ) = split('-', $row['update_date']); // My first choice. Doesn't work for a date field. At least not for me when I tried it. Bummer!!

I'd rather not use " year(update_date) as update_year, ..." I know this works, but just isn't feasible for what I'm doing with my query. Hard to explain...

Thanks for all the suggestions...
I'm back on track,

Cheers!
jdc44

liquorvicar

If you're getting more than one element from the date, you might want to use getdate() rather than multiple calls to date().