returning false on date function

webnick

Hi, I need to get someone's age in years + months for different dates. For some reason, my input check isn't working and I keep getting a mktime error? Is there an easier way to return false if dates aren't splitting or numeric?

Thanks for any help!

function getAge($date, $futureDate=false)
{
		if(preg_match('/^[0-9]{2}\/[0-9]{2}\/[0-9]{4}$/', $date) === false) { return false; }
		elseif($futureDate!=false && preg_match('/^[0-9]{2}\/[0-9]{2}\/[0-9]{4}$/', $futureDate) === false) { return false; }

	$p = split('[/.-]', trim($date)); 
	$start = mktime(0, 0, 0, $p[0], $p[1], $p[2]);

	$end = mktime(); // 1970s unix bday
	if($futureDate!==false) { 
			$p = split('[/.-]', trim($futureDate)); // delimiter can be slash, dot, or hyphen
			$end = mktime(0, 0, 0, $p[0], $p[1], $p[2]);
	}
	if(!$start || !$end || !$p) { 
			return false; }
	$age = abs($end - $start);

	$y = $age / (60 * 60 * 24 * 365);
	$m = strstr(($age / (60 * 60 * 24 * 365)), '.') * 12; // remainder of months
	$h = $age / (60 * 60 * 24); // hours in period
	return array(
			'y' => floor($y),
			'm' => floor($m),
			'h' => floor($h),
			's' => $age
			);
}

NogDog

preg_match() does not return FALSE if a match is not found, but 0 (integer 0). Therefore if you change your "=== FALSE" to "== FALSE" in your preg_match if conditions, you'll likely get your expected results.

You could also verify the input date parts with [man]checkdate[/man] after you split them up and before proceeding with the rest of the code.

rowanparker

Could someone please explain the difference between '===' and '=='?

rincewind456

Could someone please explain the difference between '===' and '=='?

Comparison Operators

rowanparker

rincewind456 wrote:
Comparison Operators

Thank you 🙂

webnick

That did the trick! Thanks NogDog. Essentially, == checks if the values match; both 'true' and '1' have a set value. The integer '1' is different from the float '1.0000' and not ===.

Thanks!

Weedpacket

It's a little weird that preg_match returns 1 and 0 instead of true and false; but it does make a bit more sense when you regard that as "the number of matches found", because then it's behaving just like preg_match_all.

It also makes it possible to distinguish between "0" meaning "it was a sensible request but I didn't find anything" and "false" meaning "I couldn't find anything because the request didn't make sense".