Question

The code works perfect, but since I’m repeating myself (which I like to avoid while programming), I was wondering if this could be written any shorter/better?

$start = getLocaleDate($item[0]['start_day']);
$start = $start['day_int'] . ' ' . $start['month_string'];
if ($item[0]['start_houre'] !== '00:00:00') {
    $houre = stripLeadingZero(substr($item[0]['start_houre'], 0, 2));
    $minute = substr($item[0]['start_houre'], 3, 2);
    $start .= ' at' . $houre . 'u' . $minute;
}

$end = getLocaleDate($item[0]['end_day']);
$end = $end['day_int'] . ' ' . $end['month_string'];
if ($item[0]['end_houre'] !== '00:00:00') {
    $houre = stripLeadingZero(substr($item[0]['end_houre'], 0, 2));
    $minute = substr($item[0]['end_houre'], 3, 2);
    $end .= ' at' . $houre . 'u' . $minute;
}

Answer 1

Without changing any of the functionality, you could make it into a function:

function getTime($item, $which) {
    $time = getLocaleDate($item[0][$which . '_day']);
    $time = $time['day_int'] . ' ' . $time['month_string'];
    if ($item[0][$which . '_houre'] !== '00:00:00') {
        $houre = stripLeadingZero(substr($item[0][$which . '_houre'], 0, 2));
        $minute = substr($item[0][$which . '_houre'], 3, 2);
        $time .= ' at' . $houre . 'u' . $minute;
    }
    return $time;
}

$start = getTime($item, 'start');
$end = getTime($item, 'end');

* It should be noted that this code doesn’t do any error checking/prevention though, so if there is no index 0 in the $item, you will have an error (same goes for $item[0]['start_day'], $item[0]['end_day'], etc). To handle a simple-case, you could add if (!isset($item[0])) return ''; to the beginning of the function, if it’s a concern.