Home/ Questions/Q 1115897
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-17T03:13:27+00:00

Heres my code: //Setup days $data[‘days’][‘FALSE’] = ‘Day’; //Setup months $data[‘months’] = array(‘FALSE’ =>

  • 0

Heres my code:

//Setup days
 $data['days']['FALSE'] = 'Day';

 //Setup months
 $data['months'] = array('FALSE' => 'Month',
                 '1'  => 'Jan',
                 '2'  => 'Feb',
                 '3'  => 'Mar',
                 '4'  => 'Apr',
                 '5'  => 'May',
                 '6'  => 'Jun',
                 '7'  => 'Jul',
                 '8'  => 'Aug',
                 '9'  => 'Sep',
                 '10' => 'Oct',
                 '11' => 'Nov',
                 '12' => 'Dec'
                );


 for($i=1;$i<=31;$i++){
    $data['days'][$i] = $i;
 }

 //Setup years
 $start_year = date("Y",mktime(0,0,0,date("m"),date("d"),date("Y")-100)); //Adjust 100 to however many year back you want
 $data['years']['FALSE'] = 'Year';

 for ($i=$start_year;$i<=date("Y");++$i) {
    $data['years'][$i] = $i;
}

and here’s my if statement:

if($this->form_validation->run()){
    $month = $this->input->post('months');
    $day = $this->input->post('days');
    $year = $this->input->post('years');

    $birthday = date("m-d-Y H:i:s",mktime(0,0,0,$month,$day,$year));
 }

here’s my corresponding code in my form in the view:

   <p>
        <label for="birthday">Birthday: </label>
        <?php echo form_dropdown('days',$days). " " . form_dropdown('months',$months). " " . form_dropdown('years',$years); ?>
    </p>

When I put the datepicker code directly in my controller the drop down on my form shows correctly. I wanted to be neat with my coding so decided to create a model and attempted to make calls from my controller but I get the undefined variable error a few times when my view tries to display the form.

I’ve done some research and wondering whether it’s better to make my datepicker a helper “datepicker_helper.php” put the code in there and load it in my controller.

Is this the best way to do this?

If so can somebody give me a example of how I can do this? If there is another way can somebody show me please?

Thanks in advance.. I’m here to learn..

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A lot of developers – myself included – have developed their own version of this code. There are two issues I want to point out here.

    First of all, you’ve lulled yourself into a false sense of security here. Bounded select elements can not and will not guarantee that every request includes a valid date. Never trust input. Always validate. Extend the Form_validation class with your own date validation functions.

    Second, making a user pull three dropdowns (without the mitigating guarantee of a valid date in all requests) is pretty crappy UX, especially in cases where the user needs to populate multiple dates (start date/end date, milestone dates, etc).

    After I came to understand these two things, I refactored this out of my site. Now my date fields are input type text, with a label that specifies the expected format of the date. My Form_validation class is extended to validate date fields. And I’ve added a real datepicker to my forms.

    • 0