Output each date between two dates

[netromd]

Hi all,

I'm trying to build a booking system where the customer picks out two dates, start date and end date. Those two dates are saved in my database, but in order to grey out all the days between the start and end dates in my calendar, I need to output every single day (my calendar can disable a array of dates)

Example: start date is 02-04-2011, end date is 02-07-2011. I need the output to be: 02-04-2011, 02-05-2011, 02-06-2011, 02-07-2011.

The start and end dates are put in variables $date1 and $date2. The output must be in mm-dd-yyyy format.

I don't know where to start at all 😕 - any suggestions?

TIA.

[bradgrafelman]

Untested, since I'm not at a computer with PHP accessible at the moment, but here's one way of doing it using the [man]DateTime[/man] class:

// assume $startDate contains starting date from DB in YYYY-MM-DD format
// assume $endDate contains ending date from DB in YYYY-MM-DD format\
// result: $dates is an array of dates in MM-DD-YYYY format

for($date = new DateTime($startDate), $end = new DateTime($endDate), $dates = array(),
	$increment = new DateInterval('P1D'); $date <= $end; $date->add($increment))
{
	$dates[] = $date->format('m-d-Y');
}

[Res]

There are a number of ways you can do this. I'll show you what I think is the easier to understand.

//we know what our start and end are
$start_date = '2011-02-05';
$end_date = '2011-02-14';
//as we loop we will check tmp_end and increment it
//to build the days between
$tmp_end = $start_date;

//we wan't to run the loop until end_date and tmp_end are the same
while($end_date != $tmp_end){

    //here we are using tmp_end and adding one day to it
    //and formatting it as the rest of the dates are
$tmp_end = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($tmp_end." +1 days"));

//by default our loop will add whatever end_date is
    //this will ensure it gets just the days between
if($tmp_end != $end_date){
	$between_dates[] = $tmp_end;
}

}

//view the array we built
echo "<pre>";
print_r($between_dates);
echo "</pre>";

[netromd]

Thanks for your replies!

@ bradgrafelman

I never used classes, and it seems a bit complicated (at least for me) to get into. I guess I was looking for a simpler (novice-friendly if you will) code 🙂

@ Res

I kind of understand what's going on in the code.. but it seems to loop forever? My webserver returns a 30 second time out. 😕

[bradgrafelman]

netromd wrote:

I never used classes, and it seems a bit complicated (at least for me) to get into.

OOP programming can get somewhat complicated, especially if you don't learn the theory behind it. However, the basic concepts aren't hard to understand, and OOP is a fundamental aspect of many programming languages, so it might be worth your time to learn it early.

[netromd]

I managed to find something that did exactly what I need:

function getDaysInBetween($start, $end) {
// Vars
$day = 86400; // Day in seconds
$format = 'Y-m-d'; // Output format (see PHP date funciton)
$sTime = strtotime($start); // Start as time
$eTime = strtotime($end); // End as time
$numDays = round(($eTime - $sTime) / $day) + 1;
$days = array();

// Get days
for ($d = 0; $d < $numDays; $d++) {
$days[] = date($format, ($sTime + ($d * $day)));
}

// Return days
return $days;
}



#####################| Print |####################

$sdate = "2010-03-5";
$edate = "2010-03-15";

$days = getDaysInBetween($sdate, $edate);

foreach ($days as $val)
{
echo $val."<br />";
} 

Still, thanks for your replies!

[bradgrafelman]

The only problem with that solution, however, is that it incorrectly assumes that every day is 86400 seconds in length.