Check if todays date is between two other dates

Question

I am trying to check if todays date is between START and STOP date of a period, Winter, summer, spring etc..

and if the todays date is between, lets say.. the winter per

Answer 1

Remember that a variable can be overwritten - just as the year progresses through the seasons, your variable can as well - as long as we do it in order we'll end up on the correct one. This means we only have to test if our date is after the date that a season changes.

// Since we're testing today's date
// we use the current year timestamps
$year = date('Y');
$startSpring = strtotime("$year-03-01");
$startSummer = strtotime("$year-06-01");
$startAutum = strtotime("$year-09-01");
$startWinter = strtotime("$year-12-01");

$today = time();

// The year starts with Winter
$season = 'Winter';
if($today > $startSpring) $season = 'Spring'; // Past the 1st day of spring?
if($today > $startSummer) $season = 'Summer'; // Etc...
if($today > $startAutumn) $season = 'Autumn';
if($today > $startWinter) $season = 'Winter';

echo 'It is currently '.$season;

Here's the same logic cleaned up in a pretty function that will check any date for you and return the season:

// Accepts an optional unix timestamp
// Uses the current date by default
function getSeason($test_date=FALSE){
    $test_date = $test_date ? $test_date : time();

    // Use the year of the date we're testing
    $year = date('Y', $test_date);

    // The year starts with Winter
    $season = 'Winter';
    if($test_date > strtotime("$year-03-01")) $season = 'Spring'; // Past the 1st day of spring?
    if($test_date > strtotime("$year-06-01")) $season = 'Summer'; // Etc...
    if($test_date > strtotime("$year-09-01")) $season = 'Autumn';
    if($test_date > strtotime("$year-12-01")) $season = 'Winter';

    return $season;
}