The CMSB Cookbook

ADDING DAYS WEEKS OR MONTHS TO DATES - Dec 5th, 2012


When I was creating the on-line version of this cookbook, I wanted to be able to show NEW or REVISED recipes for a
period of 30 days.

Fortunately, using PHP  it's pretty easy to add (or subtract) days, weeks, or months, to a date. The trick is that you
have to convert your dates into UnixTime (seconds since 1970) before you can successfully add ore subtract the values.

Here's how I accomplished my goal.

First I created 2 checkboxes fields in my editor. One for New and one for REVISED.

Then I defined the date and time variables that I needed to compare. (Current UnixTime is shown for clarity of this
recipe) and placed the code within my foreach loop.

<?PHP
$newUnixTime = strtotime($record['createdDate']); // seconds since 1970 to createdDate
$updateUnixTime = strtotime( $record['updatedDate'] ); // seconds since 1970 to updateDate
$currentUnixTime = strtotime(date('Y-m-d'));
$pastUnixTime = strtotime(date('Y-m-d', strtotime("-30 day")));
$newdifference = $newUnixTime - $pastUnixTime ;
$updatedifference = $updateUnixTime - $pastUnixTime ;
?>

Once the variables were determined, it was a matter of comparing them and outputting the correct information based on
the result.

<?php if ($record['new'] == 1 && $newdifference >= 0): ?>NEW<?php endif ?>
<?php if ($record['revised'] == 1 && $updatedifference >= 0): ?>REVISED - <?php endif ?>

Some other examples of adding to and subtracting from dates.

$add_a_week = strtotime(date('Y-m-d', strtotime("+1 week")));
$subtract_2_months = strtotime(date('Y-m-d', strtotime("-2 month")));

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