Converting User Input to Standardized Date/Time

[Anon]

I'm looking for a PHP script or general algorithm that would convert a users input into some sort of standardized date. Ideally, it would return date stings as 'YYYY-MM-DD' and time strings as 'HH:MM:SS' as are the standard formats for MySQL. Actually, it could return them in any standard format or return individual values for year, month, day, hour, etc.

This is similar to the functionality of strtotime() function of later versions of PHP.

Anyone have anything like this or know where I could find a similar algorithm that would handle it?

Thanks!
-Bill

[Anon]

I have exactly the same question. Did it get resolved?

[Anon]

Joe,

I did find out that PHP has a newer function called strtotime() that is supposed to convert a string into a UNIX timestamp. I had difficulty getting this to work reliably AND it is only available for PHP versions 3.0.12 - 3.0.16 only, PHP4 >= 4.0b2.

No one ever responded to my question, but I did endup writing two simple functions for converting user input to mySQL dates and times. I share them for any and all. They aren't perfect, but they're fairly useful.

The commenting is kind of incomplete, so let me know if you have any questions.

-Bill

/*****************************************************
strtomySQLdate
takes a string and returns a string formatted in the
standard mySQL date format ('YYYY-MM-DD').
*******************************************************/
function strtomySQLdate($datestring)
{
if (ereg("-",$datestring))
{ $date_delimiter = "-"; }
elseif (ereg("/",$datestring))
{ $date_delimiter = "/"; }
elseif (ereg(".",$datestring))
{ $date_delimiter = "."; }
else
{
return(0);
}

$date_array = explode($date_delimiter, $datestring);

if(count($date_array) <> 3)
{
if((count($date_array) == 2) AND ($date_delimiter == "/"))
{
$date_array[2] = date("Y");
}
else
{
return(0);
}
}

switch($date_delimiter)
{
case "-":
$date_month = intval($date_array[1]);
$date_day = intval($date_array[2]);
$date_year = intval($date_array[0]);
break;
case "/":
$date_month = intval($date_array[0]);
$date_day = intval($date_array[1]);
$date_year = intval($date_array[2]);
break;
case ".":
$date_month = intval($date_array[1]);
$date_day = intval($date_array[0]);
$date_year = intval($date_array[2]);
break;
default:
return(0);
}

// mySQL only supports dates up to 2038-12-31
// so I decided to use 38/39 as the dividing point for 2 digit years
if($date_year<39)
{ $date_year = $date_year + 2000; }
elseif($date_year<100 and $date_year>=38)
{ $date_year = $date_year + 1900; }

if (checkdate($date_month, $date_day, $date_year))
{
$new_timestamp = mktime(6,0,0, $date_month, $date_day, $date_year);
$mysqldatestring = date("Y-m-d", $new_timestamp);
}
else
{ return(0); }

return($mysqldatestring);
}

/*****************************************************
strtomySQLtime
takes a string and returns a string formatted in the
standard mySQL time format ('HH:MM:SS').
*******************************************************/
function strtomySQLtime($timestring)
{
// split off am/pm from end of date
$time_array = explode(" ", $timestring);
$ampm_string = $time_array[1];

// split time into hour, minute, and second integers
$time_array = explode(":", $time_array[0]);

$time_hour = $time_array[0];
$time_minute = $time_array[1];
$time_second = $time_array[2];

if (ereg("noon",$timestring))
{
$time_hour = 12;
$time_minute = 0;
$time_second = 0;
}
elseif (ereg("mid",$timestring))
{
$time_hour = 0;
$time_minute = 0;
$time_second = 0;
}
// fix am/pm
// if time is PM, add 12 to the hours integer
elseif ((strtolower($ampm_string) == "pm") or (strtolower($ampm_string) == "p" ))
{
if (($time_hour < 12) AND ($time_hour > 0))
{
$time_hour = $time_hour + 12;
}
elseif (($time_hour == 12) AND ($time_minute == 0 OR $time_second == 0))
{
// the user has entered in 12:00:00 PM which isn't valid
// I'll assume that they meant 12 Noon and make no conversion
}
}
elseif ($ampm_string == "")
{
$earliest_hour_for_appointment = 7;
// uncomment the following lines to apply some artificial intelligence
//if ($time_hour<$earliest_hour_for_appointment) { $time_hour = $time_hour +
12; }
}

$new_timestamp = mktime($time_hour, $time_minute, $time_second, 1, 1, 2000);
return(date("H:i:s", $new_timestamp));
}

[Anon]

actually i used the following code to manipulate an user's date string:

$datearray = getdate(strtotime ($datestring));

$month = $datearray[mon];
$day = $datearray[mday];
$year = $datearray[year];

and now you should be able to do what ever you need with those values.

Anyway, you have to be careful because:

1. $datestring must be in mm/dd/yyyy format.

2. strtotime will parse the string even if it has a non valid date. For example, strtotime("01/32/2001") will return a timestamp equiv. to the date 02/01/2001.

I found that extremely unexpected (and annoying)

--abx_

Bill Glick wrote:

I'm looking for a PHP script or general algorithm that would convert a users input into some sort of standardized date. Ideally, it would return date stings as 'YYYY-MM-DD' and time strings as 'HH:MM:SS' as are the standard formats for MySQL. Actually, it could return them in any standard format or return individual values for year, month, day, hour, etc.

This is similar to the functionality of strtotime() function of later versions of PHP.

Anyone have anything like this or know where I could find a similar algorithm that would handle it?

Thanks!
-Bill