Formatted dates in PHP IF statement

Question

I'm using a short series of if/else if statements in PHP. Within those statements I'm checking a condition to see if it is a specific date such as the following:

    $timezone       = date_default_timezone_set('America/Chicago');
    $TheDate        = date("F j, Y, g:i a");
    if ($TheDate >= "March 30, 2016, 9:00 pm" && $TheDate <= "March 30, 2016, 9:59 pm") {
echo "this"
}

else if ($TheDate >= "April 1, 2016, 10:00 am" && $TheDate <= "April 1, 2016, 4:00 pm") {
echo "that"
}

I have no idea what is going on, but I cannot stretch the date out past the current hour, if I do, my else statement of echo "" shows.

For example, if I write a statement of IF the dates is >= March 30, 2016, 10:00 am AND less than or equal to March 30, 2016, 12:00 pm, this does not work, what I want displayed does not show up.

However, if I were to write >= March 30, 2016, 10:00 am AND less than or equal to March 30, 2016, 10:55 am, that does work.

Any idea how I can fix this?

either use unix timestamp or DateTime objects to make comparisons, not date strings — Kevin
– Kevin, Commented Mar 31, 2016 at 3:12

Brogan · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-31 03:26:11Z

2

I think what you're looking for is strtotime.

<?php    
date_default_timezone_set('America/Chicago');

$TheDate = strtotime('March 30, 2016, 9:30 pm');

//$TheDate = strtotime(date('F j, Y, g:i a'));
//$TheDate = time(); // This is much better for getting the current unix timestamp.

if($TheDate >= strtotime('March 30, 2016, 9:00 pm') && $TheDate <= strtotime('March 30, 2016, 9:59 pm')) {
    echo 'this';
}
elseif($TheDate >= strtotime('April 1, 2016, 10:00 am') && $TheDate <= strtotime('April 1, 2016, 4:00 pm')) {
    echo 'that';
}
else {
    echo 'neither';
}

answered Mar 31, 2016 at 3:26

Brogan

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4 Comments

Marlon Over a year ago

The variable, 'strtotime('March 30, 2016, 9:30 pm'); does that represent just the formatting? What if in another else statement the month is different, or the year?

Brogan Over a year ago

I left that there to show you that you can reverse the date function using strtotime, since you used the date function in your question.

Brogan Over a year ago

strtotime returns a unix timestamp of the string its trying to interpret. Thats the number of seconds since the unix epoch, January 1st, 1970. The time function returns the current unix timestamp. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time

Marlon Over a year ago

I found that I had to add an additional variable to the 'else if' statement in order for that condition to work. I had to use $TheDate2 = strtotime('April 1, 2016, 10:00 am'); the exact start time of that condition. Did I do something wrong? Should I only need one variable for the entire set of conditions?

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