Get the First or Last Friday in a Month

Question

I\'m trying to write a calendar function like this

function get_date($month, $year, $week, $day, $direction)
{
    ....
}

$week

Answer 1

No need for calculations or loops - this is very easy to do with strtotime():

Find the the Nth or Last occurrence of a particular day of a particular a month:

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Quick Code
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

// Convenience mapping.
$Names = array( 0=>"Sun", 1=>"Mon", 2=>"Tue", 3=>"Wed", 4=>"Thu", 5=>"Fri", 6=>"Sat" );

// Specify what we want
// In this example, the Second Monday of Next March
$tsInMonth = strtotime('March');
$Day = 1;
$Ord = 2;

// The actual calculations
$ThisMonthTS = strtotime( date("Y-m-01", $tsInMonth ) );
$NextMonthTS = strtotime( date("Y-m-01", strtotime("next month", $tsInMonth) ) );
$DateOfInterest = (-1 == $Ord) 
    ? strtotime( "last ".$Names[$Day], $NextMonthTS ) 
    : strtotime( $Names[$Day]." + ".($Ord-1)." weeks", $ThisMonthTS ); 


/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Explanation
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

// Specify the month of which we are interested.
// You can use any timestamp inside that month, I'm using strtotime for convenience.
$tsInMonth = strtotime('March');

// The day of interest, ie: Friday.  
// It can be 0=Sunday through 6=Saturday (Like 'w' from date()).
$Day = 5;

// The occurrence of this day in which we are interested.  
// It can be 1, 2, 3, 4 for the first, second, third, and fourth occurrence of the day in question in the month in question.
// You can also use -1 to fine the LAST occurrence.  That will return the fifth occurrence if there is one, else the 4th.
$Ord = 3;

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// We now have all the specific values we need.
// The example values above specify the 3rd friday of next march
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

// We need the day name that corresponds with our day number to pass to strtotime().
// This isn't really necessary = we could just specify the string in the first place, but for date calcs, you are more likely to have the day number than the string itself, so this is convenient.
$Names = array( 0=>"Sun", 1=>"Mon", 2=>"Tue", 3=>"Wed", 4=>"Thu", 5=>"Fri", 6=>"Sat" );

// Calculate the timestamp at midnight of the first of the month in question.
// Remember $tsInMonth is any date in that month.
$ThisMonthTS = strtotime( date("Y-m-01", $tsInMonth ) );

// Calculate the timestamp at midnight of the first of the FOLLOWING month.
// This will be used if we specify -1 for last occurrence.
$NextMonthTS = strtotime( date("Y-m-01", strtotime("next month", $tsInMonth) ) );

// Now we just format the values a bit and pass them to strtotime().
// To find the 1,2,3,4th occurrence, we work from the first of the month forward.
// For the last (-1) occurence,work we work back from the first occurrence of the following month.
$DateOfInterest = (-1 == $Ord) ?
    strtotime( "last ".$Names[$Day], $NextMonthTS ) : // The last occurrence of the day in this month.  Calculated as "last dayname" from the first of next month, which will be the last one in this month. 
    strtotime( $Names[$Day]." + ".($Ord-1)." weeks", $ThisMonthTS ); // From the first of this month, move to "next dayname" which will be the first occurrence, and then move ahead a week for as many additional occurrences as you need.