PHP Regex to check date is in YYYY-MM-DD format

Question

I\'m trying to check that dates entered by end users are in the YYYY-MM-DD. Regex has never been my strong point, I keep getting a false return value for the preg_match() I

Answer 1

You can make it this way:

if (preg_match("/\d{4}\-\d{2}-\d{2}/", $date)) {
    echo 'true';
} else {
    echo 'false';
}

but you'd better use this one:

$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $date);
if ($date) {
    echo $date -> format('Y-m-d');
}

in this case you'll get an object which is muck easier to use than just strings.