Codeigniter - Date format - Form Validation

Question

I'm using codeigniter with PHP. I'm using following form,

<?php
    echo form_open('/register/create_new', $form_params);
?>

DOB: <input type="text" id="dob" name="reg[dob]">
     <input type="submit" value="Create Account" />
</form>

here, #dob is in dd-mm-yyyy format.

my validation code is,

array(
  'field' => 'reg[dob]',
  'label' => 'DOB',
  'rules' => 'required'
)

How can i set the rules for correct date validation?

Answer 1

There is no builtin date validation in Codeigniter form_validation Library, but you can use its callback to call a function and validate the date using PHP's own capabilities.

With DateTime you can make the shortest date&time validator for all formats.

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

var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-28 12:12:12')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-30 12:12:12')); # false
var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-28', 'Y-m-d')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('28/02/2012', 'd/m/Y')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('30/02/2012', 'd/m/Y')); # false
var_dump(validateDate('14:50', 'H:i')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('14:77', 'H:i')); # false
var_dump(validateDate(14, 'H')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('14', 'H')); # true

var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-28T12:12:12+02:00', 'Y-m-d\TH:i:sP')); # true
# or
var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-28T12:12:12+02:00', DateTime::ATOM)); # true

var_dump(validateDate('Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:12:12 +0200', 'D, d M Y H:i:s O')); # true
# or
var_dump(validateDate('Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:12:12 +0200', DateTime::RSS)); # true
var_dump(validateDate('Tue, 27 Feb 2012 12:12:12 +0200', DateTime::RSS)); # false

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

Answer 2

you can do it with regex

$this->form_validation->set_rules('reg[dob]', 'Date of birth', 'regex_match[(0[1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-9]|3(0|1))-(0[1-9]|1[0-2])-\d{4}]'); 

Answer 3

Using Regex is probably the best way. I use this Regex that I found here for the format YYYY-MM-DD: http://www.regular-expressions.info/dates.html

The actual Regex is:

^(19|20)\d\d[- /.](0[1-9]|1[012])[- /.](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$

It has a nice explanation on how each section works so that you can modify it for different date formats.

Then you can use the code suggested by @Abin: (make sure you enclose it in some kind of delimiter)

$this->form_validation->set_rules('reg[dob]', 'Date of birth', 'regex_match[/^(19|20)\d\d[- /.](0[1-9]|1[012])[- /.](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$/]');