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PHP CRUD Operations with PHP Reading and Writing Reports Working with Dates

Julaine Scott
Julaine Scott
38,411 Points
Posted by Julaine Scott
Julaine Scott
38,411 Points

Cannot find correct format for date

I have tried to answer this question many different ways. The code that should work is

$timestamp = strtotime($date);

  if ($timestamp === false) { 
   return date("YYYY-MM-DD",$date);
  } else {
    $cleanDate = date('YYYY-MM-DD',strtotime($timestamp));
    return $cleanDate;
  }

But I keep getting an error message 'Does not return the correct format.' What have I missed?

index.php 
<?php

function convert_date_sql($date) {
    //add your code here
  $timestamp = strtotime($date);

      if ($timestamp === false) { 
       return date("YYYY-MM-DD",$date);
      } else {
        $cleanDate = date('YYYY-MM-DD',strtotime($timestamp));
        return $cleanDate;
      }


}

2 Answers

Joel Bardsley
Joel Bardsley
31,249 Points
Joel Bardsley
Joel Bardsley
31,249 Points

Hi Julaine, I think you're over-complicating this one. As strtotime() returns either an int timestamp on success or false on failure, you don't really need the conditional. Assume the timestamp is false and you pass it into the date function like date('F jS Y', $timestamp) - it would return a clean date of January 1st 1970 in the format specified.

Speaking of date formats, this is where you appear to be going wrong. I would recommend refreshing yourself with the date() documentation and check what characters represent a 4-digit year and so on. Note how I've formatted the date in my example above and see how it can be modified to show YYYY-MM-DD / 1970-01-01 instead.

If you need further assistance, please let me know. Good luck!

Julaine Scott
Julaine Scott
38,411 Points
Julaine Scott
Julaine Scott
38,411 Points

Thank you, I figured it must be something obvious.