PHP preg_match with working regex [duplicate]

Answer 1

This should work better, and be more simply written:

function validateDate($date)
{
  return preg_match('/^([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2}) ([1-2]{1})([0-9]{1}):([0-5]{1})([0-9]{1}):([0-5]{1})([0-9]{1})$/', $date);
}

However it will return true with 9999-99-99 29:59:59 as others mentioned...

From PHP manual, you can easily find more elegant and reliable solutions, for example (inspired from this comment):

function validateDate($data)
{
    return (date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime($data)) == $data);
}