PHP Comparing a date to todays date

Question

I am trying to take a credit card expiry date in the format of mm-yy and see if that date has passed so I know if the credit card has expired. If it has expired, a

Answer 1

When using PHP's built in date functionality, you need to make sure you are using a valid datetime format. Otherwise strtotime() will return false and DateTime() will throw an exception.

To work with non-standard datetime formats you can use DateTime::createFromFormat() to parse the datetime string and return a DateTime() object from which you can get a Unix Timestamp, convert the date into another format, or use it to compare to other DateTime objects.

// Date separated by dots
$date01 = \DateTime::createFromFormat('Y.m.d', '2017.04.18');

// Date with no separator
$date02 = \DateTime::createFromFormat('Ymd', '20170418');

// Get Unix timestamp
$timestamp = $date01->getTimestamp();

// Get MySQL format (ISO-8601)
$mysqlDate = $date02->format('Y-m-d');

So for your issue, you would do the following:

$expires = \DateTime::createFromFormat('m/y', $card_history->expire);
$today   = new \DateTime();

if($expires < $today){$expired = 'expired';}

See also:

• Convert one date format into another in PHP
• Compare DateTime objects with comparison operators in PHP