On the importance of reading the docs – PHP’s date_parse errors

It’s important to read the documentation, and then read it again once or twice.

PHP’s date_parse function parses a datetime string and returns an “array with information about the parsed date on success or FALSE on failure.”

This makes it tempting to use the function something like:

$datetime = date_parse($datetime_string);
if ( $datetime === FALSE ) {
    # Failure - deal with the bad $datetime_string
}
else {
    # Success - use the $datetime
}

However in this case failure means the the date_parse function has failed to work at a fairly fundamental level and reading the docs further you find “In case the date format has an error, the element ‘errors’ will contains the error messages.”

And indeed:

<?php
print_r(date_parse('real soon now'));
Array(
 [year] =>
 [month] =>
 [day] =>
 [hour] =>
 [minute] =>
 [second] =>
 [fraction] =>
 [warning_count] => 1
 [warnings] => Array(
   [5] => Double timezone specification
 )
 [error_count] => 1
 [errors] => Array(
   [0] => The timezone could not be found in the database
 )
 [is_localtime] => 1
 [zone_type] => 0
)

So in fact what is needed is something more like:

$datetime = date_parse($datetime_string);
if ( $datetime === FALSE ) {
    # Failure - report fatal error processing $datetime_string
}
else if ( $datetime['error_count'] > 0 ) {
    # Failure - report errors in $datetime['errors']
}
else {
 # Success - use the $datetime
 # (but maybe have a look at $datetime['warning_count'] too)
}