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The Date/Time PHP extension is a set of classes that allow you to work with almost all of the date and time related tasks. It’s been available since the release of PHP 5.2 and the extension introduced several new classes, all of which are mapped to real life scenarios:

• A date or a time is represented by a DateTime object.
• A timezone of the world is represented by a DateTimeZone object.
• DateInterval objects represent an interval. For example, when we say two days from now on, the “two days” is the interval. The DateInterval object doesn’t rely on a specific date or time.
• DatePeriod objects represent a period between two dates.

Now don’t let the last two tip you off, we’ll be looking at real world usage of these two in a moment.

From date() to DateTime

Whenever we want to show a date we used date(), it’s simple and it works. You just need to pass the date format you need. But it’s a real pain to manipulate, a good example is formatting dates and times according to a custom timezone.

DateTime does more than just return a formatted date, but before we go any further, you need to initiate a new DateTime object which represents your date and or time. Then we can do all sorts of cool stuff with it. A new instance is created just like any other PHP class.

$date = new DateTime();
    

The constructor of DateTime accepts a string parameter which defaults to “now”, the current time and date. To create an object for a specific date, you should pass the specific date and time to it. Formatting for the parameter is self explanatory in most cases. Below you can find a few different examples of constructing your DateTime object:

new DateTime('2013, March 24') //DateTime representing 2013, March 24
    new DateTime('2013-03-24') //DateTime representing 2013, March 24
    new DateTime('+2 days') //DateTime representing 2 days from now on.
    new DateTime('tomorrow')
    

When PHP is having a hard time understanding the format, it will throw an exception. A full list of the available formatting can be found in in the documentation

If there is no formatting that matches your needs, you can specify your own format by using DateTime::createFromFormat

DateTime::createFromFormat('j-M-Y', '24-Mar-2013');
    

Now that we have a DateTime object in hand we can do whole bunch of stuff, rather easily.

Unix Timestamp

$date->getTimestamp(); //returns a unix timestamp
    

Modifying Date/Times

$date->setDate(2013, 12, 30); //yyyy, mm, dd will set the the specified date
    $date->setTime(12, 3, 20); //hh, mm, ss (optional) will modify the time
    $date->modify('tomorrow'); //string based manipulation
    $date->setTimestamp(1364798550); //modify using a unix timestamp
    

Note that when out-of-range values are set, PHP will modify the date accordingly. For example, $date->setDate(2013, 12, 35); will generate 2014-01-04, the same goes for time.

Working With Multiple Dates

Now that you’re obsessed with DateTime, the next thing you know, your apps will be filled with DateTime objects. You’ll start to love dates and times like never before. From now on, you’ll be dealing with DateTime objects, not “strings” that you have to pass to the strtotime function when you need to do a little math.

Say for example that you need to compare two birthdays:

$sheldon = new DateTime('May 20th, 1980');
    $neo     = new DateTime('March 11th, 1962');
    
    if ($sheldon > $neo)
        echo 'Sheldon is younger than neo';
    

Another scenario might be comparing two dates. We can compare dates against one another like so:

$diff = $neo->diff($sheldon);
    

The diff call returns a DateInterval object. If we dump out the return value:

DateInterval Object
    (
        [y] => 18
        [m] => 2
        [d] => 9
        [h] => 0
        [i] => 0
        [s] => 0
        [invert] => 0
        [days] => 6645
    )
    

These are public properties. You can generate some friendly output from a DateInterval object:

$diff->format('Neo is older by %Y years and %m months older'); //Neo is older by 18 years and 2 months
    

What’s best about the DateInterval object is that you can apply the interval to another DateTime object:

$neo->add($diff); //neo's birthday changed to sheldon's
    

Note: Modifications to DateTime, such as adding doesn’t return new DateTime objects, it affects the original object. Always keep this in mind when passing around DateTime objects throughout your app. PHP 5.5 introduced a new class that returns new objects upon modification.

diff isn’t the only place where you can generate a DateInterval object. Since it’s a class, new objects can be initiated as usual:

$new_diff = new DateInterval('P2Y');
    

The amount of years/months/days etc., are passed in as a string to the constructor. More information can be found in the constructor’s documentation.

Working With Timezones

When creating new DateTime objects, the second argument of the constructor defines a timezone. If we skip this, a default timezone will be grabbed from the php.ini‘s date.timezone. You can modify this at runtime by calling date_default_timezone_set:

date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');
    new DateTime('today'); //datetime object is on New York time
    

You can also change timezones on the fly. As you may have guessed, first we need a Timezone object.

$timezone = new DateTimeZone('America/New_York');
    $sheldon->setTimezone($timezone); //sheldon's birthday now on to New York
    

You can define the timezone while creating your new DateTime object:

$sheldon = new DateTime('May 20th, 1980', $timezone);
    

However, an important thing to note is that setTimezone modifies the original DateTime object. What we’re basically asking is, “format this date, to this timezone” whenever we call the setTimezone method. Now on the other hand, in the last example where we pass the timezone into the DateTime constructor, we’re saying, “the date I’m creating is in this timezone”.

A list of valid timezones are available in the online documentation.

DatePeriods

I think the official manual provides the best explanation:

A date period allows iteration over a set of dates and times, recurring at regular intervals, over a given period.

DatePeriod allows us to generate a set of DateTimes using two days that we define between an interval. We pass a starting date, an interval and an ending date. On each interval a new DateTime object is created.

Let’s say that we want to get all of Sheldon’s birth dates, since his birth:

//since birthdays occur every year, the interval is one year
    $interval = new DateInterval('P1Y');
    
    //third argument is the end date, new DateTime() == right now
    $period   = new DatePeriod($sheldon, $interval, new DateTime());
    
    foreach($period as $dt) {
        //DateTime objects
        echo $dt->format('Y-m-d - D'), "\n";    
    }
    

The result would be:

1981-05-20 - Wed
    1982-05-20 - Thu
    1983-05-20 - Fri
    1984-05-20 - Sun
    1985-05-20 - Mon
    1986-05-20 - Tue
    ...
    

Now by default, the DatePeriod includes the starting date that we pass in. However, the fourth argument to the constructor allows us to skip the start date:

$period   = new DatePeriod($sheldon, $interval, new DateTime(), DatePeriod::EXCLUDE_START_DATE);
    

Let’s see how many birthday parties Neo has had before Sheldon was born:

$bdays   = new DatePeriod($neo, $interval, $sheldon, DatePeriod::EXCLUDE_START_DATE);
    echo iterator_count($bdays);
    

Extending

All of the classes that we’ve covered today can be extended to use with your own methods. One popular usage is extending the DateTime with a __toString method so that you can properly print out a DateTime object without calling format.

A Couple Usage Scenarios

• One of my personal approaches to using DateTime objects, is when dealing with date/time columns in databases. All of the dates are stored as UTC timezone dates. The app code only works with DateTime objects, but before the end query is generated, all of the dates are formatted to UTC. This approach has allowed me to work with multiple timezone inputs easily.

  I can pass in a New York time object and completely forget about formatting it, before going to the database. I can easily switch between Unix timestamps and regular date-time formatting in my database at anytime, my app code doesn’t care as long as it gets a DateTime object.

• I’ve also used DateInterval to simplify subscription payment logic. Using DateInterval objects to define the time between the subscription has made things really easy. I just need to apply the interval to last payment date.

Do you have any good date/time usage examples? Share them in the comments.

Wrap Up

The date time extension has so much to offer, if you’re on the bleeding edge, there are new classes and interfaces introduced since PHP 5.5. Be sure to checkout the manual. Thanks for reading.

Story from: http://www.youtern.com/thesavvyintern/index.php/2011/10/04/5-steps-to-improve-your-online-profile-get-noticed/

5 Steps To Improve Your Online Profile & Get Noticed

While the good old resume is in no danger of disappearing, you’d better have your online profiles in shape.

Something like 80% of all employers check you out online when you apply for a job. Assuming that you’re smart enough to have tailored your Facebook profile during the job hunt, you need tofocus on the things that will get you noticed, examined and hired.

While it used to be true that LinkedIn was THE place to host your professional profile, upstarts like BeKnown (from Monster) are making headway in the social job hunt. You’ll want to test out the new sites by building a profile and watching the results. It’s worth noting that the newer entrants have more reason to work for your success. After all, like you, they are trying to make a name for themselves.

When you post a profile or resume somewhere, you only have one goal: to get noticed by the right recruiter for the right job. Once your resume is on the list, it needs to grab the recruiter’s attention with data points that highlight your success and effectiveness in jobs like the one you want. Your profile needs to scream “Pick me! pick me! pick me! Hey, look over here and pick me.”

Here are five steps to improve your profile to get the attention you want.

• Study the descriptions of jobs you’d like to have. Read the job descriptions and learn the jargon. Print out 20. Prioritize them (from 1 to 20) by the degree of their appeal to you. Go over them line by line with the person who is your job hunt sounding board. Be able to explain why you prefer one over the other.

• Now that you have a very clear picture of which words recruiters are using to define the jobs you want, make a list of the 30 most commonly used words in those job descriptions.This is a critical step. These are the words that recruiters are searching for when you want them to find you.

• With the list in hand, rewrite your profile to make sure that you use each of those keywords at least 3 times in your profile. Be careful to make sure that your language flows gracefully. If it appears that you’ve simply stuffed the profile with key words, you are going to get ignored.

• Look for services that use your profile to match you to jobs. See if your profile matches you to the jobs you want. If it doesn’t, tweak it and watch what happens. The best profiles are tested and retested and you learn about what the market is currently offering.

• Be extremely attentive to your current job title and job description. What matters is how the recruiter will think about it, not how you, your boss or your colleagues think about it. Search LinkedIn for people with the same job title and look to see how they’ve described their job and experience. Many companies, maybe even most, have unique and idiosyncratic names for their jobs. The closer yours is to what they’re looking for, the better off you are.

The profile is here to stay. You have to manage it like it was a new puppy. By paying attention to the grooming and feeding of your online profiles, you can increase the chances of finding the job you want.

Story from: http://www.youtern.com/thesavvyintern/index.php/2011/10/04/5-steps-to-improve-your-online-profile-get-noticed/

5 Steps To Improve Your Online Profile & Get Noticed

While the good old resume is in no danger of disappearing, you’d better have your online profiles in shape.

Something like 80% of all employers check you out online when you apply for a job. Assuming that you’re smart enough to have tailored your Facebook profile during the job hunt, you need tofocus on the things that will get you noticed, examined and hired.

While it used to be true that LinkedIn was THE place to host your professional profile, upstarts like BeKnown (from Monster) are making headway in the social job hunt. You’ll want to test out the new sites by building a profile and watching the results. It’s worth noting that the newer entrants have more reason to work for your success. After all, like you, they are trying to make a name for themselves.

When you post a profile or resume somewhere, you only have one goal: to get noticed by the right recruiter for the right job. Once your resume is on the list, it needs to grab the recruiter’s attention with data points that highlight your success and effectiveness in jobs like the one you want. Your profile needs to scream “Pick me! pick me! pick me! Hey, look over here and pick me.”

Here are five steps to improve your profile to get the attention you want.

• Study the descriptions of jobs you’d like to have. Read the job descriptions and learn the jargon. Print out 20. Prioritize them (from 1 to 20) by the degree of their appeal to you. Go over them line by line with the person who is your job hunt sounding board. Be able to explain why you prefer one over the other.

• Now that you have a very clear picture of which words recruiters are using to define the jobs you want, make a list of the 30 most commonly used words in those job descriptions.This is a critical step. These are the words that recruiters are searching for when you want them to find you.

• With the list in hand, rewrite your profile to make sure that you use each of those keywords at least 3 times in your profile. Be careful to make sure that your language flows gracefully. If it appears that you’ve simply stuffed the profile with key words, you are going to get ignored.

• Look for services that use your profile to match you to jobs. See if your profile matches you to the jobs you want. If it doesn’t, tweak it and watch what happens. The best profiles are tested and retested and you learn about what the market is currently offering.

• Be extremely attentive to your current job title and job description. What matters is how the recruiter will think about it, not how you, your boss or your colleagues think about it. Search LinkedIn for people with the same job title and look to see how they’ve described their job and experience. Many companies, maybe even most, have unique and idiosyncratic names for their jobs. The closer yours is to what they’re looking for, the better off you are.

The profile is here to stay. You have to manage it like it was a new puppy. By paying attention to the grooming and feeding of your online profiles, you can increase the chances of finding the job you want.

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