Date conversion

[nimish]

I have Month, Day and Year fields on my form. When I submit this form I
want to create a valid date from all three fields before inserting into
MYSQL table.
I tried following:
$dob=$Month."-".$Day."-".$Year;
$dob = strtotime($dob) ;
But it does not update my date field in the table.
I am novice in PHP, do you know where i am making a mistake.

[Chris Hope]

Re: Date conversion

nimish wrote:
[color=blue]
> I have Month, Day and Year fields on my form. When I submit this form
> I want to create a valid date from all three fields before inserting
> into MYSQL table.
> I tried following:
> $dob=$Month."-".$Day."-".$Year;
> $dob = strtotime($dob) ;
> But it does not update my date field in the table.
> I am novice in PHP, do you know where i am making a mistake.[/color]

A MySQL date field is in the format YYYY-MM-DD so you need to format it
like so:

$dob = "$Year-$Month-$Day";

and then not do any further conversion.

Note that you should really be using $_POST for values passed from a
form as register_global s is now off by default and you cannot rely on
eg $Month being posted from a form value named "Month".

You also cannot trust any data sent from a web form and need to validate
it first. This can be as simple as casting the value as an integer like
so:

$dob = (int)$_POST['Year'].'-'.(int)$_POST['Month'].(int)$_POST['Day'];

This doesn't actually ensure it is a valid date though; you can test it
with the checkdate() function: http://www.php.net/checkdate

--
Chris Hope - The Electric Toolbox - http://www.electrictoolbox.com/

[nimish]

Re: Date conversion

Thanks very much Chris.

I changed output in YYYY-MM-DD format as per your instructions, and
even check date using checkdate(). And it returns true. But still it
is not updating my table. I am writing SQL statement like this:
$query = "insert into tbl_master(dob) values($dob)";

Now what can be the wrong?
Nimish

Chris Hope wrote:[color=blue]
> nimish wrote:
>[color=green]
> > I have Month, Day and Year fields on my form. When I submit this[/color][/color]
form[color=blue][color=green]
> > I want to create a valid date from all three fields before[/color][/color]
inserting[color=blue][color=green]
> > into MYSQL table.
> > I tried following:
> > $dob=$Month."-".$Day."-".$Year;
> > $dob = strtotime($dob) ;
> > But it does not update my date field in the table.
> > I am novice in PHP, do you know where i am making a mistake.[/color]
>
> A MySQL date field is in the format YYYY-MM-DD so you need to format[/color]
it[color=blue]
> like so:
>
> $dob = "$Year-$Month-$Day";
>
> and then not do any further conversion.
>
> Note that you should really be using $_POST for values passed from a
> form as register_global s is now off by default and you cannot rely on
> eg $Month being posted from a form value named "Month".
>
> You also cannot trust any data sent from a web form and need to[/color]
validate[color=blue]
> it first. This can be as simple as casting the value as an integer[/color]
like[color=blue]
> so:
>
> $dob =[/color]
(int)$_POST['Year'].'-'.(int)$_POST['Month'].(int)$_POST['Day'];[color=blue]
>
> This doesn't actually ensure it is a valid date though; you can test[/color]
it[color=blue]
> with the checkdate() function: http://www.php.net/checkdate
>
> --
> Chris Hope - The Electric Toolbox - http://www.electrictoolbox.com/[/color]

[nimish]

Re: Date conversion

Thanks very much Chris.


I changed output in YYYY-MM-DD format as per your instructions, and
even check date using checkdate(). And it returns true. But still it
is not updating my table. I am writing SQL statement like this:
$query = "insert into tbl_master(dob) values($dob)";
Now what can be the wrong?
Nimish

[Ken Robinson]

Re: Date conversion


nimish wrote:[color=blue]
> Thanks very much Chris.
>
> I changed output in YYYY-MM-DD format as per your instructions, and
> even check date using checkdate(). And it returns true. But still it
> is not updating my table. I am writing SQL statement like this:
> $query = "insert into tbl_master(dob) values($dob)";
>[/color]

Does the call to mysql_query() return any errors?

Try to do the query like this:

$query = "insert into tbl_master set dob='" . $dob . "'";
$result = @mysql_query($q uery);
if (!$result) echo "There's a problem with the
insert<br>".mys ql_error().'<br >Query:'.$query ."<br>\n";

Ken

[nimish]

Re: Date conversion


Ken,
I am not getting any error in SQL execution. I get 0000-00-00 00:00:00
in this field every time, which is a default value. Actually query is
not getting fail, as I am seeing other fields getting populated.
Nimish

[Steve]

Re: Date conversion


Print the query to see what is being sent to MYSQL:

....
$query = "insert into tbl_master(dob) values($dob)";
print "DEBUG: $query\n";
....

If the result looks like this:

DEBUG: insert into tbl_master(dob) values(2005-01-11)

the problem is the way you have formatted the date. Try this*:

....
$dob = "$Year-$Month-$Day";
$query = "insert into tbl_master(dob) values(\"$dob\" )";
....

....or this*:

....
$dob = "$Year$Month$Da y";
$query = "insert into tbl_master(dob) values($dob)";
....

(*example code only: naturally you will also take into account the
comments about not trusting user input)

---
Steve

[nimish]

Re: Date conversion

Great!!
....
$dob = "$Year-$Month-$Day";
$query = "insert into tbl_master(dob) values(\"$dob\" )";
This works.
Thanks a lot.

[Michael Fesser]

Re: Date conversion

.oO(nimish)
[color=blue]
>$dob = "$Year-$Month-$Day";
>$query = "insert into tbl_master(dob) values(\"$dob\" )";[/color]

Should be

$query = "insert into tbl_master(dob) values('$dob')" ;

Strings are enclosed with single quotes in SQL. Using double quotes is a
proprietary MySQL feature.

Another question: Where do $Year, $Month and $Day come from? I hope (for
you and your db) you don't use user-submitted values directly without
validation in a database query. If these values are submitted by a form
access them with one of the arrays $_GET or $_POST (dependent on the
used submission method) and make sure they contain allowed values.

Micha