Hiding a link depending on date in PHP - php

Question

I am displaying a number of dates using PHP and I need to hide them when a certain date has expired.
I am using an IF statement to run this but it doesn't seem to be working.
Any suggestions would be great
<?PHP if('09-19-2016'<DATE('m-d-Y') || $_SESSION['role'] == 'Administrator') echo('<li>Week 2 - W/C 12/09/2016</li>');?>

Answer 1

When you're doing
'09-19-2016' < date('m-d-Y')
You're ending up comparing two strings, these can't be evaluated as "greater than" or "less than". You'll need to convert it to timestamps or use DateTime objects to do it. Also, the date format isn't correct.
<?php
$date_string = "09/19/2016";
// Using objects
$current_date = new DateTime();
$your_date = new DateTime($date_string);
if ($your_date < $current_date || $_SESSION['role'] == 'Administrator')
echo'<li>Week 2 - W/C 12/09/2016</li>';
// Using timestamps
if (strtotime($date_string) < time() || $_SESSION['role'] == 'Administrator')
echo'<li>Week 2 - W/C 12/09/2016</li>';
Choose either one of the above - both will work, although I find objects easier to work with.
From your comments,
hide the date if the date has passed
Note that when using the less than operator <, doing $date < $now will evaluate to true if the date is in the past, and hide the content if the date is in the future. If you desire the opposite behavior, you just use the greater than operator <.
Here's a live demo: https://3v4l.org/N74G2
References
http://php.net/datetime.construct
http://php.net/strtotime
http://php.net/language.operators.comparison

Answer 2

You need to parse your date from your format '09-19-2016' to a timestamp or DateTime object, which PHP will be able to compare as a date. You can use PHP's date_parse_from_format() to do so.
For example:
$date = '09-19-2017';
$parsed = date_parse_from_format('m-d-Y', $date);
$timestamp = mktime(
$parsed['hour'],
$parsed['minute'],
$parsed['second'],
$parsed['month'],
$parsed['day'],
$parsed['year']
);
if ($timestamp < time()) {
echo 'older';
} else {
echo 'newer';
}
This will give you the correct answer while keeping your current format. You can see an working example here: https://3v4l.org/NIoId