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>

Not related to the question, but I think you should read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_injection :) — Lukáš Lalinský
– Lukáš Lalinský, Commented Oct 10, 2009 at 8:27
Not much to fear from SQL injection with an insert, since you can't run multiple queries in one statement by default (I think it's PHP that locks this out), BUT... +1 for bringing it up, as it is an important overall consideration :) — hlpiii
– hlpiii, Commented Oct 10, 2009 at 22:19

hlpiii · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-10 05:38:43Z

3

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

answered Oct 10, 2009 at 5:38

hlpiii

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2 Comments

Cool Guy Yo Over a year ago

This is great! how would I go about reversing this for example fetching the row 'date' from my table and having it output "tomorrow today 7 days ago" etc... with a echo statement?

hlpiii Over a year ago

Check this out: stackoverflow.com/questions/11/how-do-i-calculate-relative-time

Alec Smart · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-10 05:00:54Z

0

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'];

answered Oct 10, 2009 at 5:00

Alec Smart

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2 Comments

Alec Smart Over a year ago

Also, make sure you sanitize/filter the input.

Cool Guy Yo Over a year ago

Thanks this was exactly what I was trying to figure out. What does sanatize/filter mean?

Lukáš Lalinský · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-10 08:28:40Z

0

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']);

answered Oct 10, 2009 at 8:28

Lukáš Lalinský

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