How to check the data format in PHP

Question

I am trying to check a date format to see if I can check the data variable has certain format like MM-DD-YYYY. if not, then exit(). I am not sure how to check the format and wou

Answer 1

If you are trying to do this to limit user's input, you can always use strtotime() on the users input and convert it to a unix timestamp then use the date() function to display it how you want to.

If you really want to determine if it is in a certain format, or only require a certain format, a preg_match() with a regular expression will be of assistance, I believe on that page they have examples of parsing dates. If not it would be something like this:

if (preg_match('~[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}~', $dateStr)) { echo 'Correct format'; }

The obvious flaw with that is the date may pass the format test, but may not be a valid date. In my opinion, accept any date in the user input and use the strtotime / date to get it to the format you want.