[RESOLVED] Date Formatting Help

cescesc

Hi Again,

Yet another problem.

I am trying to input a date into mySQL database from a PHP Form.

What ever format i write the date in

14/01/2011
14-01-2011
2011-01-14

i always get the following input

0000-00-00

How do i solve this, so that the inputted date is what is passed to the database

book1.htm


<html>
<body>


<form action="book1.php" method="post"><br>

Username: <input type="text" name="User" /><br>

Horse: <input type="text" name="Horse" /><br>

Day:<input type="text" name="Day" /><br>

Month:<input type="text" name="Month" /><br>

Year:<input type="text" name="Year" /><br>

Date:<input type="text" name="Date" /><br>

Notes: <input type="text" name="Notes" /><br>

<br>
<br>
<br>
<input type="submit" />
</form>


</body>
</html>

book1.php


<?php
$con = mysql_connect("DELETED","DELETED","DELETED");
if (!$con)
  {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
  }

mysql_select_db("DELETED", $con);

$sql="INSERT INTO Booking (User, Horse, Day, Month, Year, Date, Notes)
VALUES
('$_POST[User]','$_POST[Horse]','$_POST[Day]','$_POST[Month]','$_POST[Year]','$_POST[Date]','$_POST[Notes]')";

if (!mysql_query($sql,$con))
  {
  die('Error: ' . mysql_error());
  }
echo "1 record added";

mysql_close($con)
?>

bradgrafelman

You solve it by never using a "text" field when asking for a date; instead, either use a fancy date-picker or 3 simple dropdown boxes (one each for the Month, Day, and Year).

This allows you to force the users to input the date in a way that is easily parsed by a computer without ambiguity. For example, in the dropdown box for Month you can have "January" map to "01" when the form is submitted, "February" to "02" and so on.

Then, you just concatenate the pieces together (in the proper order, using a hyphen as the separator of course). You could also use PHP's [man]checkdate/man function first to verify that the values submitted correspond to a valid date.

cescesc

Thank you again for the help,

I have gone with a drop down menu to populate the date, and it seems to be working fine 😃

cheers

Ceescesc