Can I stop PHP from putting 0 in a date?

bduncan

I have a database where users can enter information that includes four date fields. One date field is when the issue gets opened, one is when the issue is closed, and two other fields are optional, and may or may not be filed in.

Is there a way to leave the date fields of the last three as NULL, in order to test for them later, or do I need to deal with new records and updated records having a 0 in the empty date field?

Thanks for any help, this has been a royal pain for something which is seemingly simple!

ccranium

In your insertion SQL, you should just be able to use NULL.

ie,

INSERT INTO myTable (dateOne, dateTwo, dateThree, dateFour) VALUES (NULL, NULL, $validDate1, $validDate2)

bduncan

I have similar, except I am using $validDatex, where x=1 to 4. When $validDate3 ="", "0" gets entered into the database.

This has got me thinking, though, that I need to test for "", and change that variable to = "NULL". Thanks for your help, I will try that now.

bduncan

I tried your suggestion, and changed my code to test for empty by putting in:

...
if ($validDate3 ="")
$validDate3 = "NULL";
$validDate3 = addslashes($validDate3);
...

But my query still ends up with:

UPDATE sirlogid SET date1='2002-02-21', date3 ='',
...

which puts in a 0 into date3, and shows up as 0000-00-00 when I call it back after the update.

Thanks again for any suggestions, this has been so frustrating.

ccranium

A couple of things of note:

1) there's a difference between an empty variable and a variable that is equal to "". You can check for emptiness with the empty(); function.

2) you only have one equal sign in your if statement, that could throw things off if you cut and pasted.

3) "NULL" is a string, NULL is a keyword meaning, well, NULL.

I would rewrite your conditional as such:

...
if( (empty($validDate3 )) || ($validDate3 == "") ) $validDate3 = NULL;
...

Does that help?

bduncan

YES !!! thank you very much! That is what I have been missing all this time!

You can't begin to imagine my excitement. I haven't tried it yet, but that is what I have been looking for. Hopefully someone else will be saved the frustration.

Again thank you very, very much.