Question

I am new to php just to warn you. Anyway I’ve looked this up a bunch but seeing as I don’t understand too much.. I can’t see how to do this..
So I have a table with a ‘date’ column in it, and I am testing out using a form to insert values into the table.. I wanted to have it so I could split the date up in the form, (eg month: day: year) and have it combine them into one value to insert into the ‘date’ column.. any ideas how to do this?? I’d tried implode() but I’m not sure exactly how the values are sent from the form so..
With the codes:

The actual form

    <form action="submit.php" method="post" style="text-align: center; width: 550px; margin: auto;">
        <!--Id: <input type="text" name="id"> -->
        <div style="float: left;">Author: <input type="text" name="author"></div>
        <div style="float: right;">Month: <input type="text" name="month" size="3">
        Day: <input type="text" name="day" size="3">
        Year: <input type="text" name="year" size="5"><br></div>
        <textarea name="post" style="width: 550px; height: 100px;"></textarea><br>
        <input type="submit">
    </form>

</body>

the Submit.php

<?php

mysql_connect('localhost','root');
mysql_select_db('apple');

$date = implode("-", "(month, day, year)");

$sql = "INSERT INTO blog (id, author, $date, post) VALUES ('$_POST[id]', '$_POST[author]', '$_POST[date]', '$_POST[post]')";

if (!mysql_query($sql))
{
die('Error: ' . mysql_error());
}
echo "1 record added";
?>

Answer 1

implode() takes an array as its second parameter:

$date = implode("-", array($_POST['year'], $_POST['month'], $_POST['day']));

You can also use sprintf():

$date = sprintf("%04d-%02d-%02d", $_POST['year'], $_POST['month'], $_POST['day']);

There’s also two problems with your query. Try this:

$sql = "INSERT INTO blog (id, author, `date`, post) 
        VALUES ('$_POST[id]', '$_POST[author]', '$date', '$_POST[post]')";

A few other points:

• The date data type in MySQL is YYYY-MM-DD
• You’re wide open to SQL injections
• Don’t use mysql_* functions in new code. They are no longer maintained and are officially deprecated. See the red box? Learn about prepared statements instead, and use PDO, or MySQLi – this article will help you decide which. If you choose PDO, here is a good tutorial.
• The word date is reserved in MySQL. You should try to avoid naming columns after reserved words. It’s asking for problems.