Php - work with dates like "every second week on Tuesday"

Question

I have a web planning application that I am rewriting right now, and I have some questions about how to work with recurring appointments (I know that there is no shortage of “what is the best way to do this” when it comes to repetitive appt).

So, I want to offer recurring appointments when a user can schedule an appointment for a date, such as Sat, June 2 , and she should repeat every second week on Saturday for a predetermined period of time (like 1 year).

What php functions can help me determine what date is "every saturday"? I am adding an image of my user interface for clarification.

Answer 1

Personally, I would like to work with DateTime objects and use DateInterval .

In the above case, you need to determine the date of the first / next Saturday, and then just work with the P2W date interval

Basic example

$dow = 'saturday'; $step = 2; $unit = 'W'; $start = new DateTime('2012-06-02'); $end = clone $start; $start->modify($dow); // Move to first occurence $end->add(new DateInterval('P1Y')); // Move to 1 year from start $interval = new DateInterval("P{$step}{$unit}"); $period = new DatePeriod($start, $interval, $end); foreach ($period as $date) { echo $date->format('D, d M Y'), PHP_EOL; } /* Sat, 02 Jun 2012 Sat, 16 Jun 2012 Sat, 30 Jun 2012 Sat, 14 Jul 2012 … Sat, 20 Apr 2013 Sat, 04 May 2013 Sat, 18 May 2013 Sat, 01 Jun 2013 */ 

Answer 2

Well, first I would set a start date; when this day has arrived, you simply do:

 $next_date = strtotime('+2 weeks'); 

This will give you the same day, but in just two weeks. And the cycle continues :)

Answer 3

you can use the database column to store the time in seconds:

 UPDATE appointments SET dtime=UNIX_TIMESTAMP() WHERE id=5 

then you can check this value wherever a specific period has just arrived / passed:

 mysql_query("SELECT id FROM appointments WHERE dtime>='".(strtotime("-1 week"))."'); 

selected id - 1 week or more.