Use regex as others have suggested. However, those that are sent will accept invalid dates, such as 99/99/9999. Here's an improved regex (from here )
$date_regex = '!^(0[1-9]|1[012])[- /.](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[- /.](19|20)\d\d$!';
if (preg_match($date_regex, $date)) {
// do something
}
It will only accept valid dates, and it will also accept various delimiters (for example, 05.20.2002 and 05-02-2002).
, , . , strtotime().