Creating a Date Range Array with PHP

Monday, January 8. 2007

Creating a Date Range Array with PHP

I recently needed to come up with an array of dates between two given dates. I typically work in the MySQL-compatible 'YYYY-MM-DD' date format, so I wanted it to use dates like that. So I came up with the following function:

function createDateRangeArray($strDateFrom,$strDateTo) {
  // takes two dates formatted as YYYY-MM-DD and creates an
  // inclusive array of the dates between the from and to dates.

  // could test validity of dates here but I'm already doing
  // that in the main script

  $aryRange=array();

  $iDateFrom=mktime(1,0,0,substr($strDateFrom,5,2),     substr($strDateFrom,8,2),substr($strDateFrom,0,4));
  $iDateTo=mktime(1,0,0,substr($strDateTo,5,2),     substr($strDateTo,8,2),substr($strDateTo,0,4));

  if ($iDateTo>=$iDateFrom) {
    array_push($aryRange,date('Y-m-d',$iDateFrom)); // first entry

    while ($iDateFrom<$iDateTo) {
      $iDateFrom+=86400; // add 24 hours
      array_push($aryRange,date('Y-m-d',$iDateFrom));
    }
  }
  return $aryRange;
}

Note that the first parameter of my mktime function calls is a 1 due to problems I experienced before with Daylight Savings Time.

Posted by Mike Boone in Tech at 12:16 | Comments (29) | Trackbacks (0)

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First of all, thanks for posting this. It put me on the right road to solve a problem I was having with a calendar app.

However, I have a suggestion: instead of using $iDateFrom+=86400 to add 24 hours, use strtotime("+1 day",$iDateFrom) The problem is with daylight saving time. I was having issues with dates at the end of October and after several hours of hair-pulling, found this post: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.mktime.php#47079. Hopfully this will keep you and others from wasting time trying to figure out why some dates/date ranges work as expected and some don't

#1 xentrino on 2007-01-25 17:59 (Reply)

Thanks for the tip. I did some testing of my code over date ranges that included daylight-savings-time changes, and as long as all you want is the YYYY-MM-DD formatted date, the code is OK as it is. However, the time portion of the date can fluctuate from 00:00:00 to 01:00:00 to 02:00:00, so if you need the time to be steady, you might try the approach noted by xentrino, or you could simply append " 00:00:00" to the date string.

#1.1 Mike Boone (Homepage) on 2007-01-26 03:13 (Reply)

I was looking exactly for this. I just googled it and found this article.

I am actually extracting a result set from MySQL that I use to create a graph, and I needed to also show dates with empty values (those for which there is actually no data in the table).
I just had to make the dates be the keys of the array, with a value of zero.

Works fine for me, thanks for posting your code!

#2 Sébastien Guillon (Homepage) on 2007-02-05 05:52 (Reply)

I've just started learning PHP, could you guys give an example how to use this function? Thanks.

#3 Jason on 2007-04-02 13:44 (Reply)

You could use it like this to get all the days from February 15 to March 15:

$strDateFrom='2007-02-15';
$strDateTo='2007-03-15';
$aryDates=createDateRangeArray($strDateFrom,$strDateTo);
print_r($aryDates);

#3.1 Mike Boone (Homepage) on 2007-04-02 13:51 (Reply)

I just cleaned this up so it was a bit more readable, and figured I would share:

function createDateRangeArray($start, $end) {
// Modified by JJ Geewax

$range = array();

if (is_string($start) === true) $start = strtotime($start);
if (is_string($end) === true ) $end = strtotime($end);

if ($start > $end) return createDateRangeArray($end, $start);

do {
$range[] = date('Y-m-d', $start);
$start = strtotime("+ 1 day", $start);
}
while($start < $end);

return $range;
}

#4 John Geewax on 2007-07-21 20:49 (Reply)

Brilliant. Everything I attempted to generate an array of dates between a start and end date did not work. This worked like a charm. Nice work.

#4.1 Gerard Finnerty on 2008-01-29 08:02 (Reply)

Use this if you want to include the end date in the range. Line 9 was removed since it's not needed (only needed if you plan to use a smaller end date than start date).

function dateRangeArray($start, $end) {
$range = array();

if (is_string($start) === true) $start = strtotime($start);
if (is_string($end) === true ) $end = strtotime($end);

do {
$range[] = date('Y-m-d', $start);
$start = strtotime("+ 1 day", $start);
} while($start (less than symbol)= $end);

return $range;
}

#4.2 André Forsgren on 2008-11-14 06:21 (Reply)

Very close to what I need to except I want a date range from $start to $end, spaced by the week or month. I think I could use createDateRangeArray and then use some kind of skip .

desired example....
createDateRangeArray(20070312,20070420,'Week')
would result in
(20070312,20070319,20070326,20070402,20070409,20070216)

createDateRangeArray(20070312,20070420,'Month')
would result in
(20070312,20070412)

anyone help with this ?

#5 mcpaige on 2008-02-09 21:39 (Reply)

You could try John Geewax's version above and change the "+ 1 day" to "+ 1 month".

#5.1 Mike Boone (Homepage) on 2008-02-11 05:52 (Reply)

I like this
How would i go to group array by weeks ...
each week would have correspoding day number.
week2 | week3 | week4 | ...
1|2|3|...

Also if no input given it should take current month and give a week number array, days array ...
days would be grouped in each week array ...
first is needed to find number of days for current month and later first and last date or is there any other better solution ?

$week_nr['1']=array(1,2,3,4 ...);

thanks

#6 feha on 2008-02-26 01:56 (Reply)

I don't quite understand what you're trying to do. Perhaps another reader of this blog will be able to help you.

#6.1 Mike Boone (Homepage) on 2008-03-06 05:15 (Reply)

Thanks a lot for this function! I had a really hideous nested loop parsing through years, months and days, and it had a bug I could not find, your function enabled me to delete most of my script, simplify it massivly and fix the bug!!

Cheers!

#7 Laurie on 2008-04-18 07:08 (Reply)

Thanks a bunch!!! This is going to be useful!

#8 Anonymous on 2008-09-24 12:48 (Reply)

Thanks for this, just what I was looking for, but.....

Is there an easy way of limiting the returned dates to a single month. I.e. if the date range starts in one month and ends in another, only return the dates from the first.

Thanks again

#9 Duncan (Homepage) on 2009-01-28 11:55 (Reply)

You could just let the function run, then loop through the results and stop when the previous value's first 7 characters don't match:

2008-12-30
2008-12-31
2009-01-01 (stop)

Or you could modify the function to do this if you had to do it all the time.

#9.1 Mike Boone (Homepage) on 2009-01-28 13:01 (Reply)

Friends how i can validate a date range in a php form?

Example:

actual date: 10/01/2009
the user only can input date from 05/01/2009 to 15/01/2009

(dd/mm/yyyy)

#10 mariolos on 2009-03-10 18:41 (Reply)

You'll want to use PHP form validation code and optionally some Javascript form validation. Basically you need to check the value of the submitted data in $_POST, and if it is not in your date range, return the form to the user with an error. You can use the Javascript to do the same validation in the user's browser so the data will be right before it is submitted. But it's best for the server to check anyway, because Javascript can be bypassed.

#10.1 Mike Boone (Homepage) on 2009-03-11 05:59 (Reply)

Great function, thank you, exactly what I needed! thanks!

#11 Claire on 2009-10-08 02:27 (Reply)

thaks for the date range function this what i am looking for my project

#12 srihari on 2009-10-21 03:12 (Reply)

nice script....im going to try it.

Keep up good work

#13 deerawan (Homepage) on 2009-11-03 01:24 (Reply)

This place looks friendly & helpful, a php newb dare to ask if some can help use this function with a mysql_fetch_array to create an array eg:
Event date: 1st March every year.
Start Date1, End Date1 -eg d1/m1/Yx d2/m2/Yy
Star Date2, End Date2.. and so on
Would it be possible to adapt this function to list number of events each date range contains.

#14 rama on 2009-11-29 03:24 (Reply)

This is a great handy little function. Although not a terribly difficult thing to do, it saved me time and you executed it as simply as possible - thanks!

I'm using it with jQuery and the Filament date range plugin:

http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/date_range_picker_using_jquery_ui_16_and_jquery_ui_css_framework/

Thanks

#15 Dave Rogers on 2009-12-17 14:51 (Reply)

This broke at the start of the new year.

$Date1 = date('Y-n-j', strtotime('12/5/2009'));
$Date2 = date('Y-n-j', strtotime('1/4/2010'));
getDateRangeArray($Date1, $Date2);

Dates will not go beyond 12/31/2009.

#16 Dave Rogers on 2010-01-05 11:25 (Reply)

You have to give it a date in Y-m-d format, not Y-n-j.

#16.1 Mike Boone (Homepage) on 2010-01-05 11:31 (Reply)

Oh man, thanks. That's pretty fundamental, but sometimes ya miss those

Thanks very much for the extremely prompt response and the fantastic function

#16.1.1 Dave Rogers on 2010-01-05 12:55 (Reply)

Amazing, this is exactly what I was looking for. I

#17 Dave H on 2010-03-10 20:52 (Reply)

This is my version. It avoids any time zone issues, but no sanity checking. Be careful. Sorry but i don;t know how to do identation on this board.

function createMysqlDateRangeArray( $fromDate, $toDate)
{

$dateRange = (array) $fromDate;

$splitDate = explode ( '-', $fromDate );

$count=0;

while ( $dateRange[ sizeof($dateRange)-1 ] != $toDate )
{
$splitDate[2]++;

if ( ! checkdate( $splitDate[1], $splitDate[2], $splitDate[0] ) )
{
$splitDate[2]=1;
$splitDate[1]++;

if ( ! checkdate( (int)$splitDate[1], (int)$splitDate[2], (int)$splitDate[0] ) )
{
$splitDate[2]=1;
$splitDate[1]=1;
$splitDate[0]++;
}
}

$dateRange[] = str_pad($splitDate[0], 4, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT) .'-'. str_pad($splitDate[1], 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT) .'-'. str_pad($splitDate[2], 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);

}

return $dateRange;
}

#18 Tom on 2010-04-26 08:47 (Reply)

slightly better, again, time zone shifts aren't a problem

function createMysqlDateRangeArray( $fromDate, $toDate)
{

$dateRange = (array) $fromDate;

$splitDate = explode ( '-', $fromDate );

while ( $dateRange[ sizeof($dateRange)-1 ] != $toDate )
{

if ( ! checkdate( $splitDate[1], ++$splitDate[2], $splitDate[0] ) )
{

if ( ! checkdate( (int)++$splitDate[1], (int)$splitDate[2]=1, (int)$splitDate[0] ) )
{
$splitDate[2] = $splitDate[1] = 1;
$splitDate[0]++;
}
}

$dateRange[] = str_pad($splitDate[0], 4, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT) .'-'. str_pad($splitDate[1], 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT) .'-'. str_pad($splitDate[2], 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);

}

return $dateRange;
}

#19 Tom on 2010-04-26 08:54 (Reply)

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