What's the issue in a code written for comparing the date with today's date?

Question

I\'m comparing a date with current date(i.e. today\'s date). It is expected that the error should come only when the date to be compared is greater than today\'s date. It sh

Answer 1

If posted format is in m-d-Y, then you cannot convert it to unix timestamp directly with strtotime() function, because it will return false.

If you need to use strtotime() then change the input format to m/d/Y by simple str_replace().

On the other hand, you could use DateTime class, where you can directly compare objects:

$submission_date = DateTime::createFromFormat('!m-d-Y', $submission_date);
$today_date = new DateTime('today');

if ($submission_date > $today_date) {
    echo "submission_date is in the future\n";
}

demo

If you need to extract some information from DateTime objects, use format() method on them, which accepts same format as date() function:

echo $today_date->format('m/d/Y'); # 12/11/2014
echo $today_date->format('m-d-Y'); # 12-11-2014
echo $today_date->format('Y-m-d'); # 2014-12-11
echo $today_date->format('Y-Y-Y'); # 2014-2014-2014

demo