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

The easiest way to check if given date is valid probably converting it to unixtime using strtotime, formatting it to the given date's format, then comparing it:

function isValidDate($date) { return date('Y-m-d', strtotime($date)) === $date; }

Of course you can use regular expression to check for validness, but it will be limited to given format, every time you will have to edit it to satisfy another formats, and also it will be more than required. Built-in functions is the best way (in most cases) to achieve jobs.

Answer 2

I have this thing that, even with PHP, I like to find functional solutions. So, for example, the answer given by @migli is really a good one, highly flexible and elegant.

But it has a problem: what if you need to validate a lot of DateTime strings with the same format? You would have to repeat the format all over the place, what goes against the DRY principle. We could put the format in a constant, but still, we would have to pass the constant as an argument to every function call.

But fear no more! We can use currying to our rescue! PHP doesn't make this task pleasant, but it's still possible to implement currying with PHP:

<?php
function validateDateTime($format)
{
    return function($dateStr) use ($format) {
        $date = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, $dateStr);
        return $date && $date->format($format) === $dateStr;
    };
}

So, what we just did? Basically we wrapped the function body in an anonymous and returned such function instead. We can call the validation function like this:

validateDateTime('Y-m-d H:i:s')('2017-02-06 17:07:11'); // true

Yeah, not a big difference... but the real power comes from the partially applied function, made possible by currying:

// Get a partially applied function
$validate = validateDateTime('Y-m-d H:i:s');

// Now you can use it everywhere, without repeating the format!
$validate('2017-02-06 17:09:31'); // true
$validate('1999-03-31 07:07:07'); // true
$validate('13-2-4 3:2:45'); // false

Functional programming FTW!

Answer 3

I'm afraid that most voted solution (https://stackoverflow.com/a/19271434/3283279) is not working properly. The fourth test case (var_dump(validateDate('2012-2-25')); // false) is wrong. The date is correct, because it corresponds to the format - the m allows a month with or without leading zero (see: http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.createfromformat.php). Therefore a date 2012-2-25 is in format Y-m-d and the test case must be true not false.

I believe that better solution is to test possible error as follows:

function validateDate($date, $format = 'Y-m-d') {
    DateTime::createFromFormat($format, $date);
    $errors = DateTime::getLastErrors();

    return $errors['warning_count'] === 0 && $errors['error_count'] === 0;
}

Answer 4

Give this a try:

$date = "2017-10-01";


function date_checker($input,$devider){
  $output = false;

  $input = explode($devider, $input);
  $year = $input[0];
  $month = $input[1];
  $day = $input[2];

  if (is_numeric($year) && is_numeric($month) && is_numeric($day)) {
    if (strlen($year) == 4 && strlen($month) == 2 && strlen($day) == 2) {
      $output = true;
    }
  }
  return $output;
}

if (date_checker($date, '-')) {
  echo "The function is working";
}else {
  echo "The function isNOT working";
}