[RESOLVED] Convert input date to mysql date

[Kurtismonger]

Wanted to see if there was a cleaner way to do this. My form takes a user-input date in the format MM/DD/YYYY. I need to convert that to YYYY-MM-DD to query against my database. The code below works, but basically I take input dates convert them to a UNIX timestamp with strtotime() and then convert them back to the format I need using strftime()

$format = '%Y-%m-%d';
$startDate =  strtotime($startDate);
$startDate = strftime($format, $startDate);

$endDate =  strtotime($endDate);
$endDate = strftime($format, $endDate);

[NogDog]

That's probably the cleanest way to do it. However, you might want to add some error-checking by verifying that each strtotime() does not return false (PHP 5.1+) or -1 (PHP < 5.1).

[halojoy]

You can use PHP date format, but it wouldnt make much difference.

Also you can make a 'one-liner', using my last version

<?php

$startDate = '10/16/2007';
// Default version using strftime() format
$format = '%Y-%m-%d';
$startDate =  strtotime($startDate);
$startDate = strftime($format, $startDate);

echo $startDate;
echo '<hr>';

$startDate = '10/16/2007';
// Using date() with PHP date format
$format = 'Y-m-d';
$startDate =  strtotime($startDate);
$startDate = date($format, $startDate);

echo $startDate;
echo '<hr>';


$startDate = '10/16/2007';
// One-liner version with date()
$startDate = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($startDate));

echo $startDate;
echo '<hr>';