php/mysql: strToTime error manipulating dates - php

Question

I have some code for rendering dates that was working great for a couple of years and is now broken. I don't know if it has something to do with my host changing version of PHP or somehow an error crept in.
Basically, dates such as 11/30/15 are now getting rendered as 11/30/-1
Here is an example of what is going on:
$olddate = $row['date'];//in database this looks like:0000-00-00 00:00:00
$newdate = nicedate($olddate);
echo "starting date time: ".$olddate;//displays as 'starting date time: 0000-00-00 00:00:00'
echo "after transforming it with nice date: ".$newdate; //displays as 'after transforming it with nice date: 11/30/-1'
I also tried just running strtotime and get this:
echo "after transforming it with strtotime: ".nicedate($row['starttime']);//-62169966000
// gets nice data
function nicedate($datetime) {
$niceDate = strtotime($datetime);
$niceDate = date("m/d/y",$niceDate);
return $niceDate;
}

Answer 1

As you can see here https://3v4l.org/8gqCK it really depends on which PHP version you are using.
PHP will render the string 0000-00-00 00:00:00 to -0001-11-30 00:00:00.000000
This is an example output from DateTime:
object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
["date"]=>
string(27) "-0001-11-30 00:00:00.000000"
["timezone_type"]=>
int(3)
["timezone"]=>
string(13) "Europe/Berlin"
}
The OUTPUT also depends on the time zone:
object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
["date"]=>
string(27) "-0001-11-29 23:06:32.000000"
["timezone_type"]=>
int(3)
["timezone"]=>
string(3) "UTC"
}
This would output:
...with nice date: 11/29/-1
And here strtotime():
int(-62169987208)
So you see the date function were changed on different version, what you can do now ist just to check if the date is 0000-00-00 00:00:00:
function nicedate ( $datetime ) {
if( $datetime == "0000-00-00 00:00:00" ) return "Some value or false?";
...
...
}
You also have a look at the MySQL mode: NO_ZERO_IN_DATE
Updated approach due to the comments below:
function nicedate( $datetime ) {
if( !validateDate( $datetime ) ) return "something";
$dateTimeObject = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $datetime );
return $dateTimeObject->format( "m/d/y" );
}
function validateDate($date) {
$d = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $date);
return $d && $d->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') == $date;
}
function was copied from this answer or php.net
This is because 0000-00-00.... is not a valid date. What happens is simple, from year, month, day,... is alway one (1) substracted from the last.
0000 -1 = -1// year
00 - 1 = 11// month, because 12 is the highest value that datetime recognizes as month
00 - 1 = 30// day, because 31 is the highest value that datetime recognizes as day
For hours, minutes, seconds,.. it's ok, because zero is a valid value for time.
That's why it is rendered like this: -0001-11-30 00:00:00.000000