preg_replace and dates

rupertbj

Hi,

I have a list of directories which are based on dates - i.e. 20100401 is 1st April 2010.

Currently the links to the directories on my webpage are like 20100401. I would like to display them as a list of dates like 1st April 2010.

How do I achieve this?

I believe preg_replace will do this for me, but i cannot understand from the documentation how to implement this.

Many thanks for your help.

dagon

i would use substr to extract the components them date and mktime

Weedpacket

Or [man]sscanf[/man].

rupertbj

so I have this code so far:

$dir = "pictures";
$files = scandir($dir, 0);
for( $ctr = 1; $ctr < sizeof( $files ); $ctr++ ) {
if($files[$ctr] != "." && $files[$ctr] != "..")
$date = sscanf($files[$ctr], );
print "<a href='list_pictures.php?pics=$dir/$files[$ctr]'>$date</a><br>";
}

Clearly the sscanf bit is incomplete... I can't find how to split the numbers into the first four digits (year), fifth and sixth digits (month) and last two digits (day).

There is a note about n being the number of charcters processed so far, but how do i make it deal with the first four characters and associate that with the year etc.?

laserlight

Wel... try:

<?php
$date = '20100401';
if (sscanf($date, '&#37;4d%2d%2d', $year, $month, $day) == 3) {
    $months = array(1 => 'January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June',
        'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December');
    echo $day . ' ' . $months[$month] . ' ' . $year;
}

You should be able to adapt it to what you have now. If you prefer, you could also convert the date into a timestamp, and then use [man]date/man.

rupertbj

Thanks Weedpacket and Laserlight - really helpful.

I now have the following code:

$dir = "pictures";
$files = scandir($dir, 0);
for( $ctr = 1; $ctr < sizeof( $files ); $ctr++ ) {
if($files[$ctr] != "." && $files[$ctr] != "..")
if (sscanf($files[$ctr], '%4d%2d%2d', $year, $month, $day) == 3) {
    $months = array(1 => 'January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June',
        'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December');
    $date = "$day  $months[$month] $year";
}
print "<a href='list_pictures.php?pics=$dir/$files[$ctr]'>$date</a><br>";
}

which gives a nice list:

19 March 2010
20 March 2010
25 March 2010
26 March 2010
27 March 2010

which all link to the directory of the pics to be displayed 🙂

But, how do I make it show the list with the most recent one first?

Thanks

Weedpacket

Uh, reverse the array?

rupertbj

Thanks Weedpacket.

Now I have:

$dir = "pictures";
$files = scandir($dir, 0);
$filesr = array_reverse($files);
for( $ctr = 1; $ctr < sizeof( $filesr ); $ctr++ ) {
if($filesr[$ctr] != "." && $filesr[$ctr] != "..")
if (sscanf($filesr[$ctr], '%4d%2d%2d', $year, $month, $day) == 3) {
    $months = array(1 => 'January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June',
        'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December');
    $date = "$day  $months[$month] $year";
print "<a href='list_pictures.php?pics=$dir/$filesr[$ctr]'>$date</a><br>";
	}
}

but the result does not have all the directories which exist listed.

it is missing 20100327 - what is going wrong?

Weedpacket

for($ctr = 1

Arrays are indexed starting from zero, not one.

rupertbj

Thanks Weedpacket - I'm learning... albeit slowly!
R