I have been pulling out my hair for the last few hours...
Given two dates in whichever format, e.g. 2009-10-06 and November 12, 2009, which is the best logical approach here to get all dates in between those two dates?
I was thinking of converting the received dates into timestamps, then using mktime to add one day to the older timestamp till i get to the new one, but a small voice tells me there is a better way. Any ideas?
Here is the code I am using.
<?php
/**
* Get the days between two dates and return those actual dates in an array
*/
function getDaysBetweenDates($startDate, $endDate){
//initialize array that will get returned
$daysBetweenDatesArray = array();
//attempt to convert the received dates into timestamps
$startDateTimestamp = strtotime($startDate);
$endDateTimestamp = strtotime($endDate);
/*TODO: Problem 1: even if the received dates are bogus, strtotime() will convert them into
sane timestamps, which might pass the checkdate() validation below
*/
//check that the received values are valid
if (!checkdate(date('n',$startDateTimestamp), date('j',$startDateTimestamp), date('Y',$startDateTimestamp))) {
//do some error handling here
return false;
}
if (!checkdate(date('n',$endDateTimestamp), date('j',$endDateTimestamp), date('Y',$endDateTimestamp))) {
//do some error handling here
return false;
}
//dates received are probably valid
/*
Logic 1: One day has (24*60*60) seconds, therefore, if I can get the number of 86400 seconds between those two days,
I can get those actual dates. Havent used this method
Logic 2: Use mktime to add One to the start date, then increment $startDateTimestamp with 86400, i.e. the number of seconds in one day
and loop it untill $startDateTimestamp is less than or equal to $endDateTimestamp.
*/
//variable to count the number of times the loop has run, will be used as index in the $daysBetweenDatesArray array
$loopCounter = 1;
//variable to store the dates found in between, not really necessary, the dates found could be put directly in the array
$dateInBetweenTimestamp = '';
//assume startDate is included, put it as first element in array
$daysBetweenDatesArray[0] = date('j-n-Y', $startDateTimestamp);
while ($startDateTimestamp <= $endDateTimestamp) {
//in order to use mktime, we will need seconds, minutes, hours, day, month and year for each date
$startDateSecond = date('s',$startDateTimestamp);
$startDateMinute = date('i',$startDateTimestamp);
$startDateHour = date('G',$startDateTimestamp);
$startDateDay = date('j',$startDateTimestamp);
$startDateMonth = date('n',$startDateTimestamp);
$startDateYear = date('Y',$startDateTimestamp);
$dateInBetweenTimestamp = mktime($startDateHour, $startDateMinute, $startDateSecond, $startDateMonth, $startDateDay+1, $startDateYear);
$daysBetweenDatesArray[$loopCounter] = date('j-n-Y', $dateInBetweenTimestamp);
//increment loop counter
$loopCounter++;
//increment $startDateTimestamp
$startDateTimestamp = $startDateTimestamp + 86400;
}
return $daysBetweenDatesArray;
}
?>
How to use:
<?php
$datesInBetween = getDaysBetweenDates('2009-01-01', '2009-01-30');
print_r($datesInBetween) ;
?>