Correctly determine if date string is a valid date in that format

Question

I\'m receiving a date string from an API, and it is formatted as yyyy-mm-dd.

I am currently using a regex to validate the string format, which works ok,

Answer 1

Tested Regex solution:

    function isValidDate($date)
    {
            if (preg_match("/^(((((1[26]|2[048])00)|[12]\d([2468][048]|[13579][26]|0[48]))-((((0[13578]|1[02])-(0[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01]))|((0[469]|11)-(0[1-9]|[12]\d|30)))|(02-(0[1-9]|[12]\d))))|((([12]\d([02468][1235679]|[13579][01345789]))|((1[1345789]|2[1235679])00))-((((0[13578]|1[02])-(0[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01]))|((0[469]|11)-(0[1-9]|[12]\d|30)))|(02-(0[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8])))))$/", $date)) {
                    return $date;
            }
            return null;
    }

This will return null if the date is invalid or is not yyyy-mm-dd format, otherwise it will return the date.

Answer 2

    /**** date check is a recursive function. it's need 3 argument 
    MONTH,DAY,YEAR. ******/

    $always_valid_date = $this->date_check($month,$day,$year);

    private function date_check($month,$day,$year){

        /** checkdate() is a php function that check a date is valid 
        or not. if valid date it's return true else false.   **/

        $status = checkdate($month,$day,$year);

        if($status == true){

            $always_valid_date = $year . '-' . $month . '-' . $day;

            return $always_valid_date;

        }else{
            $day = ($day - 1);

            /**recursive call**/

            return $this->date_check($month,$day,$year);
        }

    }

Answer 3

You can also Parse the date for month date and year and then you can use the PHP function checkdate() which you can read about here: http://php.net/manual/en/function.checkdate.php

You can also try this one:

$date="2013-13-01";

if (preg_match("/^[0-9]{4}-(0[1-9]|1[0-2])-(0[1-9]|[1-2][0-9]|3[0-1])$/",$date))
    {
        echo 'Date is valid';
    }else{
        echo 'Date is invalid';
    }

Answer 4

Determine if any string is a date

function checkIsAValidDate($myDateString){
    return (bool)strtotime($myDateString);
}

Answer 5

Use in simple way with php prebuilt function:

function checkmydate($date) {
  $tempDate = explode('-', $date);
  // checkdate(month, day, year)
  return checkdate($tempDate[1], $tempDate[2], $tempDate[0]);
}

Test

   checkmydate('2015-12-01'); //true
   checkmydate('2015-14-04'); //false

Answer 6

How about this one?

We simply use a try-catch block.

$dateTime = 'an invalid datetime';

try {
    $dateTimeObject = new DateTime($dateTime);
} catch (Exception $exc) {
    echo 'Do something with an invalid DateTime';
}

This approach is not limited to only one date/time format, and you don't need to define any function.