Repeat event on assigned day every week until specific date - php

Question

When creating event I need to set event start and event end in datetime format (0000-00-00 00:00:00)
Then I have option to set weekly repeating of that event until specific date (0000-00-00)
But I can't insert repeating events properly in database. Here is what I have:
$startDateTime = '2015-04-30 10:30:00';
$endDateTime = '2015-04-30 11:30:00';
$repeatEndDate = '2015-06-01';
$timestamp = strtotime($startDateTime);
$day_of_week = date('l', $timestamp);
$step = 1;
$unit = 'W';
$repeatStart = new DateTime($startDateTime);
$repeatEnd = new DateTime($repeatEndDate);
$repeatStart->modify($day_of_week);
$interval = new DateInterval("P{$step}{$unit}");
$period = new DatePeriod($repeatStart, $interval, $repeatEnd);
foreach ($period as $key => $date ) {
$repeatQuery = 'INSERT INTO event(start,end,status,repeats) VALUES ("'.$startDateTime.'","'.$endDateTime.'","'.$status.'","'.$repeatEndDate.'")';
$repeatResult = mysqli_query($db, $repeatQuery) or die (mysqli_error($db));
}
When I do print_r($date); it looks like this, no actual time just 00:00:00
DateTime Object
(
[date] => 2015-04-30 00:00:00
[timezone_type] => 3
[timezone] => Europe/Berlin
)
I know that I can't insert values like that but I don't know how to get correct values from objects.
So in this example I need to insert events that begin in 10:30:00 and end in 11:30:00(events always end same day) every Thursday starting at 2015-04-30 and ending at 2015-06-01. How can this be achieved?
Thank you

Answer 1

The problem is you're calling DateTime::modify with a day name (currently 'Thursday'). This value is calculated from the $startDateTime variable, and then used to modify that variable, so the only effect it has, is resetting the Time portion of that DateTime instance back to 0:00:00.
The following gives me the results I would expect:
(I've commented out the parts you need to remove from yours, to make it easier to see the difference)
date_default_timezone_set('Etc/UTC');
$startDateTime = '2015-04-30 10:30:00';
$endDateTime = '2015-04-30 11:30:00';
$repeatEndDate = '2015-06-01';
#$timestamp = strtotime($startDateTime);
#$day_of_week = date('l', $timestamp);
$step = 1;
$unit = 'W';
$repeatStart = new DateTime($startDateTime);
$repeatEnd = new DateTime($repeatEndDate);
#$repeatStart->modify($day_of_week);
$interval = new DateInterval("P{$step}{$unit}");
$period = new DatePeriod($repeatStart, $interval, $repeatEnd);
foreach ($period as $key => $date ) {
echo($date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s')) . PHP_EOL;
}
The result from running the above is:
2015-04-30 10:30:00
2015-05-07 10:30:00
2015-05-14 10:30:00
2015-05-21 10:30:00
2015-05-28 10:30:00

Answer 2

When you modify your $repeatStart using the modify() method you are using the l format character which, according to the docs, returns
A full textual representation of the day of the week
by changing the $day_of_week format string to
$day_of_week = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $timestamp);
I get the following output
DateTime Object
(
[date] => 2015-04-30 10:30:00
[timezone_type] => 3
[timezone] => Europe/London
)
DateTime Object
(
[date] => 2015-05-07 10:30:00
[timezone_type] => 3
[timezone] => Europe/London
)
DateTime Object
(
[date] => 2015-05-14 10:30:00
[timezone_type] => 3
[timezone] => Europe/London
)
DateTime Object
(
[date] => 2015-05-21 10:30:00
[timezone_type] => 3
[timezone] => Europe/London
)
DateTime Object
(
[date] => 2015-05-28 10:30:00
[timezone_type] => 3
[timezone] => Europe/London
)
Although, the modification is not actually necessary and the following code should achieve what you are looking for.
<?php
$startDateTime = '2015-04-30 10:30:00';
$endDateTime = '2015-04-30 11:30:00';
$repeatEndDate = '2015-06-01';
$step = 1;
$unit = 'W';
$repeatStart = new DateTime($startDateTime);
$repeatEnd = new DateTime($repeatEndDate);
$interval = new DateInterval("P{$step}{$unit}");
$period = new DatePeriod($repeatStart, $interval, $repeatEnd);
foreach ($period as $key => $date ) {
$repeatQuery = 'INSERT INTO event(start,end,status,repeats) VALUES ("'.$startDateTime.'","'.$endDateTime.'","'.$status.'","'.$repeatEndDate.'")';
$repeatResult = mysqli_query($db, $repeatQuery) or die (mysqli_error($db));
print_r($date);
}