Figure out what day each array starts and ends on? - php

Question

I have an array of words and each word is valid from 5PM that day until 5PM the next day, then the next word is valid. Except on weekends in which a word for Friday lasts until Monday at 5PM.
Now what I am trying to do is determine if the users inputted word is valid for that period of time. I have a working example which works fine, but my problem is the weekends mess everything up. And I can't seem to figure out how to make them work.
I got a function to figure out how many weekends occur between two timestamps
// Figure out how many weekends occured between two dates
function weekends($date1, $date2) {
$d1 = new DateTime('#' . $date1);
$d2 = new DateTime('#' . $date2);
// Compare the two dates
$diff = $d1->diff($d2);
// Get number of days between them
$days = $diff->format('%a');
// Find out day of the week we start on
$start = $d1->format('w');
// Verify we are not on a weekend
if($start == 0 || $start == 6)
return false;
// Number of days until weekend
$until_weekend = 7 - $start; // (6 is Saturday but we are counting today)
// Find out how many days are left between the first weekend and the end
$left = $days - $until_weekend;
// How many weekends
$weekends = floor($left / 7) + 1;
return $weekends;
}
And then I got a function to determine if the word is valid for that date range
// Keyword Validation
function keyword_validate($keywords = array()) {
if(empty($keywords)) return false;
// Break into values
$keyword = $keywords['keyword'];
$contest = $keywords['contest'];
$keywords = $contest['keywords'];
// Get some dates
$now = new DateTime('now');
$start = new DateTime('#' . $contest['start_time']);
$s1 = new DateTime('#' . $contest['start_time']); // value for timestamps
$s2 = new DateTime('#' . $contest['end_time']); // value for timestamps
$end = new DateTime('#' . $contest['end_time']);
// Verify keyword exists
if(in_array($keyword, $keywords) === FALSE)
return false;
// Get index
$index = array_search($keyword, $keywords);
// See if we somehow got more then one keyword
if(count($index) != 1)
return false;
// get number of weekends
$weekends = weekends($start->getTimestamp(), $end->getTimestamp());
// Based on index get the two container timestamps
$s = $s1->add(new DateInterval('P' . $index + $weekends . 'D'));
// Verify start doesn't equal Friday or a Weekend
$e = $s2->add(new DateInterval('P' . $index + $weekends + 1 . 'D'));
if($s === FALSE || $e === FALSE)
return false; // Something really bad happened
// Based on dates find out if the keyword works.
print $s->getTimestamp();
print $e->getTimestamp();
// Get the current time
}
As you can seem the keyword function doesn't work atm. What I am doing atm is matching the index of the keyword to day, but if it is say Tuesday (2 weekends after) how can I make it so the index is increased by 4. Sorry if this doesn't make any sense, I'm a little lost.

Answer 1

Try redefining the problem to make it simpler. Instead of trying to do math with funny exceptions to figure out which item is associated with which day, perhaps try creating a new array with a value of the word for each day. It could look like this:
array(
'cake',
'pie',
'pudding',
'happy', //friday
'happy', //saturday
'happy', //sunday
'nothappy',
...
);
Building this array should be simpler than the things you're trying to do now. Once you have this array, checking should be trivial.

Answer 2

Could you not just have an array that can contain seven spaces? When the "friday" index is changed, set the "Saturday"/"Sunday" to mirror it.