php date validation

Question

Im trying to to set up a php date validation (MM/DD/YYYY) but I'm having issues. Here is a sample of what I got:

$date_regex = '%\A(0[1-9]|1[012])[- /.](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[- /.](19|20)\d\d\z%'; 

$test_date = '03/22/2010'; 
if (preg_match($date_regex, $test_date,$_POST['birthday']) ==true) {
    $errors[] = 'user name most have no spaces';`

Answer 1

REGEX should be a last resort. PHP has a few functions that will validate for you. In your case, checkdate is the best option. http://php.net/manual/en/function.checkdate.php

Answer 2

Though checkdate is good, this seems much concise function to validate and also you can give formats. [Source]

function validateDate($date, $format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s') {
    $d = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, $date);
    return $d && $d->format($format) == $date;
}

^{function was copied from this answer or php.net}

The extra ->format() is needed for cases where the date is invalid but createFromFormat still manages to create a DateTime object. For example:

// Gives "2016-11-10 ..." because Thursday falls on Nov 10
DateTime::createFromFormat('D M j Y', 'Thu Nov 9 2016');

// false, Nov 9 is a Wednesday
validateDate('Thu Nov 9 2016', 'D M j Y');

Answer 3

Use it:

function validate_Date($mydate,$format = 'DD-MM-YYYY') {

    if ($format == 'YYYY-MM-DD') list($year, $month, $day) = explode('-', $mydate);
    if ($format == 'YYYY/MM/DD') list($year, $month, $day) = explode('/', $mydate);
    if ($format == 'YYYY.MM.DD') list($year, $month, $day) = explode('.', $mydate);

    if ($format == 'DD-MM-YYYY') list($day, $month, $year) = explode('-', $mydate);
    if ($format == 'DD/MM/YYYY') list($day, $month, $year) = explode('/', $mydate);
    if ($format == 'DD.MM.YYYY') list($day, $month, $year) = explode('.', $mydate);

    if ($format == 'MM-DD-YYYY') list($month, $day, $year) = explode('-', $mydate);
    if ($format == 'MM/DD/YYYY') list($month, $day, $year) = explode('/', $mydate);
    if ($format == 'MM.DD.YYYY') list($month, $day, $year) = explode('.', $mydate);       

    if (is_numeric($year) && is_numeric($month) && is_numeric($day))
        return checkdate($month,$day,$year);
    return false;           
}         

Answer 4

Nicolas solution is best. If you want in regex,

try this,

this will validate for, 01/01/1900 through 12/31/2099 Matches invalid dates such as February 31st Accepts dashes, spaces, forward slashes and dots as date separators

(0[1-9]|1[012])[- /.](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[- /.](19|20)[0-9]{2}

Answer 5

Try This

/^(19[0-9]{2}|2[0-9]{3})\-(0[1-9]|1[0-2])\-(0[1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-9]|3[0-1])((T|\s)(0[0-9]{1}|1[0-9]{1}|2[0-3]{1})\:(0[0-9]{1}|1[0-9]{1}|2[0-9]{1}|3[0-9]{1}|4[0-9]{1}|5[0-9]{1})\:(0[0-9]{1}|1[0-9]{1}|2[0-9]{1}|3[0-9]{1}|4[0-9]{1}|5[0-9]{1})((\+|\.)[\d+]{4,8})?)?$/

this regular expression valid for :

• 2017-01-01T00:00:00+0000
• 2017-01-01 00:00:00+00:00
• 2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
• 2017-01-01 00:00:00+0000
• 2017-01-01

Remember that this will be cover all case of date and date time with (-) character

Answer 6

You can use some methods of the DateTime class, which might be handy; namely, DateTime::createFromFormat() in conjunction with DateTime::getLastErrors().

$test_date = '03/22/2010';

$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('m/d/Y', $test_date);
$date_errors = DateTime::getLastErrors();
if ($date_errors['warning_count'] + $date_errors['error_count'] > 0) {
    $errors[] = 'Some useful error message goes here.';
}

This even allows us to see what actually caused the date parsing warnings/errors (look at the warnings and errors arrays in $date_errors).