Dates in PHP

ive been thinking of making a small script to handle my things to do for each day, instead of writing them down on paper, and losing it, since i have a bad memory.

i actually havent started the script yet, but theirs this question in the back of my head that ive gotta get out before i start it.

Its about dates in php.

Lets say in a db i have a field inside a table which contains the date the entry was made.

what i want to know is how do i query the db in such a way that todays date, and all days before that, are displayed

im thinking something like this

mysql_query("SELECT * FROM testtable WHERE date <=$todaysdate")

would this work, (the var $todaysdate would equal 2daysday, if you didnt get the idea their)

thanks in advance

My gut feeling is your example will work, but as a habit, I usually convert all dates to timestamps before doing calculations on them. It may be overkill, but it's kept me out of trouble before.

Me too, sore the time in timestamp , and with PHP functions, its easily convertable to other formats

what exactly is a timestamp??? to get the time i just use gmtime()??

is their a better way?? can you please explain about his timestamp

thanks

a time stamp is the number of seconds or milliseconds passed since the Unix Epoch (1-1-1970). Best would be if you insert a date using PHP with (for example):


or something like that...

For instance, when you store the date in your MySQL database, you might do it like so:

mysql_query("INSERT INTO testtable SET date=CURDATE(), task='What to do today'");

This, of course, inserts the current date in the "date" column. Then, as you suggested in your initial question, you SHOULD be able to retrieve the data thus:

$result=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM testtable WHERE date<=CURDATE() AND task IS NOT NULL");

I haven't tested it, but it should work.

An alternative uses timestamps. Consider (in PHP):

$date = time();
$task = "What to do today";
mysql_query('INSERT INTO testtable SET date="$date", task="$task"');

Then, to retrieve your list, you could use:

$date = time();
$result=mysql_query('SELECT * FROM testtable WHERE date<="$date" AND task IS NOT NULL');
while ($answer = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$timestamp=$answer['date'];
$fdate=date("D M j, Y",$timestamp);
echo "Date: ".$fdate." Task: ".$answer['task']."<br>\n";
}

Again, this method could be overkill. Your original choice is more elegant if it works.

thanks for your suggestions guys, ill start programing it soon, and let you know how it goes