PHP Comparing a date to todays date - php

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 class of expired is inserted on the <tr>
My code results in a sample date of 05/16 being checked, and the script says that the card has not expired when obviously this card is a year old.
<?php foreach($card_historys as $card_history){
$expired = "";
$date = strtotime($card_history->expire); //Returns a date in mm/yy
$noww = strtotime(date('m/y'));
echo "expire: ".$date." / now: ".$noww."<br>";
if($date < $noww){$expired = 'expired';}
?>
<tr class="<?php echo $expired; ?>">
What did I do wrong?

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