Question

I have created a function that will determine if an “offer” is currently valid. Each offer has a start and end date stored in a database and I use the date() function to figure if its valid. However, I have a problem since the following scenario is not returning “TRUE”. I believe it should return “TRUE”. What am I not getting?

$start = 2010-9-18  
$stop = 2010-10-10
// Current date is 2010-9-19

function is_active($start, $stop) {

$now = date("Y-n-d");

if($now >= $start && $now <= $stop) {
return true;
 }
}
?>

Thanks for helping out!

Answer 1

date() returns a string. Strings are compared by lexicographical ordering. In this ordering, 9 is larger than 10 because 1<anything> appears before 9<anything>.

One simple fix is to use Y-m-d instead of Y-n-d, and record the $start as '2010-09-18'.

$start = '2010-09-18';
$stop  = '2010-10-10';
// Current date is 2010-9-19

function is_active($start, $stop) {

$now = date("Y-m-d");

if($now >= $start && $now <= $stop) {
return true;
 }
}