Question

I’m moving data from a text file to a database. The text file has dates in the format ‘Oct 29’ and ‘Nov 1’ (Oct and Nov are the only 2 months in this file). I’d saving the date into a mysql database. How can I convert this format to a date field (assuming year 2012) without doing it manually?

Answer 1

Without seeing your text file, assuming the year as 2012, an array including $array as $item['datefield'] and that you want to achieve the date translations in php alone:

foreach ($array as $item) {
   // Format other vars...
   $insert_date = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($item['datefield']." 2012"));

 $query_insert = "
  INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2, datefield,...)
  VALUES ($item['value1'], $item['value2'], $insert_date,...)
 ";
}

There’s little point in formatting as yyyy-mm-dd H:m:s as you don’t have it in your datefield…