mktime(); time(); date(); strtotime(); - halp :'(

[kthnx]

Hey all,

PHP Code:

$distant = "2010-04-28 17:00:00"; 


What's the best way to tell if $distant is today, tomorrow or later? As far as I can tell (majorly confused) I should be using one of the functions in the title but I can't get my head around how they all interact.

I want to be able to tell the user if that datestamp is today (before midnight) tomorrow (before midnight tomorrow, after midnight tonight) or later (after midnight tomorrow) but that needs so many variables I don't know how to construct or operate on

Thanks for any advice! Apologies for being a noob

[alexlim2000]

Wait, what?
Tomorrow, by definition is after midnight (today/tomorrow midnight).

Just check the 'day' component in the date. against today. (or the entire date really).

Also; you will need to convert for GMT +10 or whatever timezone you're in.

[Ashpool]

Something like this? you probably don't need the cast. I haven't tested it, but you should be able to figure it out from here.

<?php

$distant = "2010-04-28 17:00:00";  
$distantDay = (int) substr($distant, 5, 2);
$todayInt = (int) date("d");

switch ($distantDay) {

   case ($distantDay =  todayInt):
   echo "Today";
   break;

   case ($distantDay =  todayInt + 1):
   echo "Tomorrow";
   break;

   case ($distantDay >  todayInt + 1 ):
   echo "Some day after tomorrow";
   break;
}

?>

[Foliage]

You can convert a date to an int just like that?

[BIPyjamas]

Ashpool didn't convert it to an int, he did a substring to get a part of the date string... which I think is the wrong part. Looks like the month is getting stored rather than the day as intended.

The trouble with doing it that way is that on month boundaries you're going to run into issues. You really need to also check the month as well as the year for end of year boundaries.

[Ashpool]

Originally Posted by BIPyjamas

which I think is the wrong part. Looks like the month is getting stored rather than the day as intended.

The trouble with doing it that way is that on month boundaries you're going to run into issues. You really need to also check the month as well as the year for end of year boundaries.

Yes, nice spotting! It was the wrong part.

What I've shown is not a great way to do it but its a good primer to start with.

A better way would be to convert the date to an epoch date and do the comparison that way.

The standard unix way is measured in the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT). Note that mktime uses mm-dd-yyyy formats. This way you avoid any problems with month, year rollovers.

<?php 
$distant = "2010-04-28 17:00:00"; 
$distantEpTime = mktime(
   0,0,0,
   (int) substr($distant, 5, 2),
   (int) substr($distant, 8, 2),
   (int) substr($distant, 0, 4)
);

$todayEpDate = mktime (
   0,0,0, 
   date("m"),
   date("d"),
   date("Y")
);

$today = date("Y-m-d");

$tomorrowEpDate = mktime(
   0,0,0,
   date("m", strtotime($today)),
   date("d", strtotime($today)),
   date("Y", strtotime($today))
);

$tomorrowEpDate = $tomorrowEpDate + 86400;

switch ($distantEpTime) {

case ($distantEpTime < $todayEpDate):
   echo "I think this day has come and gone :";
   echo $distantEpTime;
   echo " < ";
   echo $todayEpDate;
   break;

   case ($distantEpTime == $todayEpDate):
   echo "Today :";
   echo $distantEpTime;
   echo " = ";
   echo $todayEpDate;
   break;
     
   case ($distantEpTime == $tomorrowEpDate):
   echo "Tomorrow :";
   echo $distantEpTime;
   echo " = ";
   echo $tomorrowEpDate;
   break;

   case ($distantEpTime > $tomorrowEpDate):
   echo "Some day after tomorrow :";
   echo $distantEpTime;
    echo " > ";
     echo $tomorrowEpDate;
   break;
   
}

?>

I'm sure there is a better way to do it but as with all programming there are several ways to skin a cat. In fact thinking about it now you could just compare the mktimes using datediff or the like and use a +1 on the mktime day. MKtime is smart enough to calculate the correct dates if you add numbers past an end of month/year rollover.

[BIPyjamas]

I think your initial way was an interesting way of doing it, just wanted to point out the missing bits just incase the OP decides to run with it.

Personally, I prefer to use split() when possible as opposed to substr(). It's not fun keeping track of substring positions; much nicer to use delimiters. For example,

$distant = "2010-04-29 00:24";
list($date, $time) = split(" ", $distant);
list($year, $month, $day) = split("-", $date);
list($hour, $minute) = split(":", $time);

$distantEpTime = mktime(0, 0, 0, $month, $day, $year);

That way you get nice easy assignment of date/time parts into singular variables so you can muck about with creating dates and unix times as needed. To each there own as you say.

[kthnx]

Thanks for the responses guys, helped me realise there was a much more elegant way to do it

For the record:

PHP Code:

<?
function printTime($raw)
{
// Finds the current day of the year (0-365) and the event day of the year (0-365)
$currentDay = date("z");
$eventDay = date("z", strtotime($raw));
// Compensates for if the event is next year and thus on a new 0-365 loop
if ((date("Y", strtotime($raw))) != (date("Y"))) {
        $eventDay = $eventDay + 365;
        // and if it's a leap year, we've got to add one more day
        if (date("L") == 1) {
            $eventDay++;
        }
}
// Format box if today
if (($eventDay - $currentDay) == 0) {
$boxDay = "Today";
$boxColor = "red";
}
// If tomorrow
if (($eventDay - $currentDay) == 1) {
$boxDay = "Tommorow";
$boxColor = "yellow";
}
// If within one week
if ((($eventDay - $currentDay) >> 1) && (($eventDay - $currentDay) << 7)) {
$boxDay = date("l", strtotime($raw));
$boxColor = "blue";
}
// If over a week
if (($eventDay - $currentDay) >= 7) {
$boxDay = date("l, j M", strtotime($raw));
$boxColor = "blue";    
}
// Prints box
echo "<div class=\"event-date ".$boxColor."\"><span>";
echo $boxDay." ".date("g:i a", strtotime($raw));
echo "</span></div>";
}
?>

Receives $raw timestamps like 2010-04-29 17:00:00 and formats the display to Today, Tomorrow, Within 1 week, >1week. Works for leap years etc too