How to insert norman date in mysql using php? - php

Question

I'm totally new to php and mysql & need some help with this.
I want to insert a date into a mysql table, formatted as dd/mm/yyyy.
I have 4 columns in my table: id, name, age & birthday.
MY HTML-CODE
<form action="php_creat_cliente.php" method="post">
Name : <input name="reference" type="text" /><br />
Age : <input name="focode" type="text" /><br />
Birthday : <input name="date" type="text" /><br />
</form>
MY PHP-CODE
<?php
include('config.php');
$name=$_POST['name'];
$age=$_POST['age'];
$birthday=$_POST['birthday'];
$save=mysql_query("INSERT INTO loan (name, age, birthday) VALUES ('$name', '$age', '$birthday')");
header("location: index.html");
exit();
?>
Currently, the date is inserted in the mm/dd/yyyy format, but I need it in the dd/mm/yyyy format.

Answer 1

You have several ways, but the best if you are inserted as date or timestamp.
The first way is, if you store it in a varchar field, but in this case you can not use the mysql date functions.
Insert in regular way: YYYY-MM-DD
And, when you need it, you can use the mysql date functions to format it, or you can format it with php code also.
If you are assuming, your $_POST['birthday']; comes in mm-dd-yyyy format, then you should do something like this
//This varaible will come from the form, this is just a test now!
$_POST["birthday"] = 'mm-dd-yyyy';
$month = substr($_POST["birthday"], 0, 2);
$day = substr($_POST["birthday"], 3, 2);
$year = substr($_POST["birthday"], 6);
$birthday = $year . "-" . $month . "-" . $day;
$save = mysql_query("INSERT INTO loan (`name`, `age`, `birthday`) VALUES ('".$name."','".$age."','".$birthday."')");

Answer 2

MySQL accepts a string in the format of 'yyyy-mm-dd' or 'yyyymmdd' for dates. So you can enter it in the text field in whichever format you want as long as you make sure you reformat it (in your code) to a valid format (like the ones I mentioned) before passing it to the database.
Or you can specify the format yourself like so:
$save=mysql_query("INSERT INTO loan (name, age, birthday)
VALUES ('$name', '$age', STR_TO_DATE('$birthday', '%d-%m-%Y'))");
The jQuery UI Datepicker widget is popular for dates in forms.
As others have mentioned the current way you're doing this (at least the way shown here) is prone to SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, and everything in between. I'd advise you to learn about these attacks if you are to become a web developer.
EDIT:
What jQuery UI Datepicker helps with is picking a date and placing it in the text field in a valid date format. You can specify the format in which you want the widget to show your date like this:
$( "#datepicker" ).datepicker( "option", "dateFormat", "dd-mm-yy" );
And then you can make sure MySQL accepts the date format you're submitting in your insert command by specifying it like I showed above:
STR_TO_DATE('$birthday', '%d-%m-%Y')