PHP: Start Date - End Date range parsing by month - php

Question

Ok, I've got a logistical question here more so than coding one, but a code example/solution might answer both, so here goes...
If I have a form that I pass in PHP with start_date and end_date (full on m/d/Y format) and I need to print out a table of all entries in mysql database that fall in that range (so from m1/d1/Y1 to m2/d2/Y2) grouped by month, how would I even go about doing that in an elegant way?
For example, if I pass start_date = 5/20/2012, end_date = 7/31/2012, I need the resulting table to show results in this format:
May 2012 | June 2012 | July 2012
.... | .... | .....
where the first column for May 2012 would show results from an mysql query like
SELECT ... WHERE signup_date >= 5/20/2012 AND signup_date <= 5/31/2012
and June 2012 would similarly show:
SELECT ... WHERE signup_date >= 6/1/2012 AND signup_date <= 6/30/2012
etc
So I am looking for a way to parse the start and end date into an array of dates properly arranged from the starting day of the month until the last day of the month, and if the end_date is a few months later then cover all the other months in-between in full (from 1st til last of that month), so that I can cycle through them in a for/while loop? So something like:
[0]['start'] => '5/20/2012'
[0]['end'] => '5/31/2012'
[1]['start'] => '6/1/2012'
[1]['end'] => '6/30/2012'
[2]['start'] => '7/1/2012'
[2]['end'] => '7/31/2012'
Any ideas?

Answer 1

You should be do achieve this with mktime() . Sample code below.
<?php
$startDate = '05/20/2012';
$endDate = '07/31/2012';
$curMonth = date("m", strtotime($endDate)); //End Month
$curYear = date("Y", strtotime($endDate)); //End Year
$months = array();
$months[] = array('start' => "$curMonth/01/$curYear", 'end' => $endDate);
while ("$curMonth/01/$curYear" > $startDate) {
$monthEnd = date("m/d/Y", mktime(0, 0, 0, $curMonth, 0, $curYear));
$curMonth = date('m', strtotime($monthEnd));
$curYear = date('Y', strtotime($monthEnd));
$monthStart = ($curMonth/01/$curYear > $startDate) ? $startDate : "$curMonth/01/$curYear";
$months[] = array('start' => $monthStart, 'end' => $monthEnd);
}
print_r(($months));
?>

Answer 2

try this:
$date = '5/20/2012';
$dateStart = date("m/01/y", strtotime($date));
$start = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($dateStart));
$end = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($dateStart. '+ 1 month - 1 day') );
echo $start;
echo $end;

Answer 3

See my comments first for mysql db date format.
written a bit in pseudo language
$sql="SELECT * FROM ... WHERE `signup_date`>='2012-5-20' AND `signup_date`<'2012-5-31' ORDER BY `signup_date`";
$result=mysql_query($sql);
$month_year=array() //3-dimensional array $month_year[year][month][primary_key];
$month_index=-1;
while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
// find $month_of_the_date AND $year_of_the_date
//find different months ,corresponding years, and db primary key and keep track in the $month_year array
}
for( all the years in the array ){
for(all the corresponding months of the year in the array){
//**EDIT:** you MIGHT need other loops and arrays to collect distinct years and corresponding months together
// show the records with the primary keys corresponding to that month and year
}
}