Date/Time Processing with PHP (
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Like most programming languages, PHP comes with a fairly
full-featured API for date and time value manipulation. You've probably
used it in your applications, but never bothered to look too closely at
it. Well, here's your chance to rectify that mistake - this article
delves into the date/time API in depth, uncovering some hidden nuggets
and demonstrating how it can be used to simplify date and time
processing in your PHP scripts.Some once famously said, "the more things change, the more they remain the
same". And nowhere is this more true than in the area of programming
languages.
No matter what your poison may be - Perl, PHP, Python, JSP -
every language comes with certain fundamental constructs and concepts that are
widely-understood and used. For example, though they may be called by different
names, almost every language comes with string, numeric and array variables,
conditional tests, loops, functions, exception handlers et al. This commonality
makes it possible for experienced developers to easily switch from one
development environment to another. This switch is not necessarily instant - the
devil is still in the details - but a sound understanding of basic programming
principles can go a long way to make it more painless.
What does this
have to do with anything? Well, almost every language - including PHP, which is
the subject of this article - comes with certain basic capabilities for date and
time value manipulation. These capabilities may be implemented as functions,
objects or object methods, but they do exist, in more or less similar form, in
almost every language. And, over the course of this article, I'll be looking at
how they work, and how they can be used to add something new to your bag of PHP
tricks.
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