note 58146 added to function.strtotime

A quick little note I found handy while working with a client that did not know how to prepare a date field in a file that was being imported by a PHP script into MySQL... if the date field is kept as VARCHAR in MySQL, the strtotime() function works quite well when comparing dates to get an active member count (based on a subscription service where the date stored in MySQL is in the future). I'm sure you can find other uses for it with simple modifications: Example fgets from file upload: (FName,LName,Date) "John","Doe","8/1/2007" <?PHP $query = "SELECT * FROM mbr_list"; $sql = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error()); $active=0; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql,MYSQL_ASSOC)){ $goodUntil = $row['Date']; if (strtotime("now")<strtotime($goodUntil)){ $active++; } } ?> Since strtotime interprets ASCII into a time format, a date doesn't have to be stored as a 'date' in MySQL (YYYY-MM-DD). ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+58146 Delete: added to the manual -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+58146&report=yes&reason=added+to+the+manual Delete: bad code -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+58146&report=yes&reason=bad+code Delete: spam -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+58146&report=yes&reason=spam Delete: useless -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+58146&report=yes&reason=useless Delete: non-english -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+58146&report=yes&reason=non-english Delete: already in docs -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+58146&report=yes&reason=already+in+docs Delete: other reasons -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+58146&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+58146&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php