Re: Validation of Primary Key Datetime variable

[graeme <graeme_foster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To reiterate what others have said avoid user input as your primary key, 
an auto increment would be better.

But to get back to your validation problem, you might want to look up 
the strtotime() function

graeme.


S.D.Price wrote:

> Thanks for this George. I am populating the datetime field from user
> input, and users can change the date if they need to.
>
> The problem I have is with validation. I think I will need to use some
> kind of regular expression to check that the date has been entered in
> the correct format, but I am not sure what.
>
> Steven
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Pitcher [mailto:george.pitcher@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 28 February 2005 13:31
> To: S.D.Price
> Subject: RE:  Validation of Primary Key Datetime variable
>
>
> Simon,
>
> Why not use a varchar datatype and populate it yourself. It can then be
> modified, but the data can still be displayed in the way you want, by
> being a bit more creative with the code.
>
> I don't store dates as date datatype but as integers, that way I could,
> if required, move my code to a different db with no extra work.
>
> George
>  
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: S.D.Price [mailto:S.D.Price@xxxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: 28 February 2005 12:38 pm
> > To: php-windows
> > Subject:  Validation of Primary Key Datetime variable
> >
> >
> > Hi, I wonder if anyone can help.
> >
> > I have designed a newsblog which uses PHP and MySQL. Each news story 
> > has a primary key which is the current date. The datatype used in 
> > MySQL is "datetime". When stories are extracted from the database the 
> > user can then navigate based on date order.
> >
> > When a user adds a news story to the database the current days date is
> >    
>
>  
>
> > shown in the form using
> >
> > <dt>
> > <label for="publish_date"><?php echo $publish_datelabel 
> > ?></label></dt> <dd><input type="text" name="publish_date" 
> > id="publish_date" value="<?php echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s') ?>"/></dd>
> >
> >
> > This is the date added to the DB by default.
> >
> > However, the user must be able to change the date so that they can set
> >    
>
>  
>
> > a date sometime in the future when they want the story to be 
> > published. The only stories shown in the archive (and pulled through 
> > to the home
> > page) are those which are before or on today's date.
> >
> > My problem is that I am not sure how to validate any changes made to 
> > the $publish_date so that it will conform to the required datetime 
> > range in MySQL and not give the useless answer 0000:00:00 00:00:00.
> >
> > Does anyone know how to do this?
> > Thanks
> >
> > Steven Price
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >    
>
>  

--
Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.

Minna Antrim