Date validation in PHP

Question

What would the regex expression that would go into preg_split function to validate date in the format of

7-Mar-10 or how can I validate a date of format 7-Mar-10 in PHP

Thanks.

Answer 1

strtotime?

And here's an example of how to use it

function isValidTime($str) {
    return strtotime($str) !== false;
}

Answer 2

I'd make it first with explode,

$parts=explode("-",$date);

then with array

$months=array("Jan"=>1,"Feb"=>2...)

and then use checkdate($months[$parts1],$parts[0],$parts[2]);

Answer 3

The DateTime class's createFromFormat method (also available in function form) allows one to parse a date string against a given format. The class also has the benefit of keeping track of errors for you should you want see what went wrong.

Here's a quick yay/nay validation function:

function valid($date, $format = 'j-M-y') {
    $datetime = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, $date, new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
    $errors   = DateTime::getLastErrors();
    return ($errors['warning_count'] + $errors['error_count'] === 0);
}

var_dump(valid('7-Mar-10')); // bool(true)
var_dump(valid('7-3-10'));   // bool(false)

Of course, the above is only for validating a single format of date (and only available as of PHP 5.3) so if you are just wanting to accept any date (even 'wrong' dates that get automatically converted to the right value), or for whatever reason cannot yet use PHP 5.3, then as mentioned in other answers, strtotime would be of assistance.