Entering Dates into mysql database using sql INSERT

Question

A better suggestion on how to approach this then what I have done so far would be appreciated. Right now the dates have to be entered in the correct format year-month-day. Is there a way to automate this task more, with drop downs, just not sure how you would combine the information from the drop downs to submit to one field with my sql INSERT INTO command. This is what it looks like for a quick visual site

Here is an example of my code below.

$date = $_POST['date'];
$title = $_POST['title'];
$entry = $_POST['entry'];





if(($date !="") && ($title !="") && ($entry !="")) {

$sql = "INSERT INTO news (date,title,entry)VALUES(
\"$date\",
\"$title\",
\"$entry\"
)";

$results = mysql_query($sql)or die(mysql_error());

}
?>







<form name="formS" method="post" action="insert.php">
<p>
Date:<input type="text" name="date" id="date" />

</p>

<p>
Title<input type="text" name="title" id="title" />
</p>
<p>
Entry:<textarea name ="entry"  ></textarea>
</p>

<p>
Submit:<input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" />
</p>


</form>

Answer 1

You can simply accept the date as multiple drop down boxes and then combine them before inputting it in the database

$date = $_POST['dateyear']."-".$_POST['datemonth']."-".$_POST['dateday'];

Answer 2

One free-form date input field can be fine, depending on your needs. This will give people a lot of flexibility in how they enter a date. For instance, this will work if someone enters "Yesterday" or "7 days ago".

$date = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($_POST['date']));

Demo:

$date_expressions = array(
    "yesterday",
    "tomorrow",
    "7 days ago",
    "next year",
    "last month",
    "10 jan 08"
);

date_default_timezone_set("America/Los_Angeles");

echo "<pre>";
foreach ($date_expressions as $date_expression) {
    $date = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($date_expression));
    echo "{$date_expression} = {$date}\n";
}
echo "</pre>";

Output (executed on 10-9-2009):

yesterday = 2009-10-08
tomorrow = 2009-10-10
7 days ago = 2009-10-02
next year = 2010-10-09
last month = 2009-09-09
10 jan 08 = 2008-01-10

Answer 3

If you have multiple inputs for the date, you can combine it like this:

$date = sprintf('%04d-%02d-%02d', $_POST['date_year'], $_POST['date_month'], $_POST['date_day']);