From this chapter on speaking of dates always implies a date with a time, even when not explicitly mentioned.
Setting only a specific date implies a time set to 00:00:00. Setting only a specific date implies a date
internally set to 01.01.1970. The following sections show basic usage of Zend_Date
primarily by
example.
Without any arguments, constructing an instance returns an object in the default locale with the current date.
Reviewing basic methods of Zend_Date
is a good place to start for those unfamiliar with date
objects. A small example will be provided for each method.
The date in a Zend_Date
object may be obtained as a localized integer or string using the
get()
method. There are many available options, which will be explained in later sections.
The set()
method alters the date stored in the object. Again, there are many options which
will be explored in later sections.
Adding two dates with add()
usually involves adding a real date in time with an artificial
date part, such as 12 hours, as shown in the example below. Both add()
and
sub()
use the same set of options as set()
, which will be explained later.
All basic Zend_Date
methods can operate on entire dates contained in the objects, or can
operate on date parts, such as comparing the minutes value in a date to an absolute value. For example,
the current minutes in the current time may be compared with a specific number of minutes using
compare()
, as in the example below.
Example 6.6. compare() - compare dates
<?php require_once 'Zend/Date.php'; $date = new Zend_Date(); // Comparation of both times if ($date->compare(10, Zend_Date::MINUTE) == -1) { print "This hour is less than 10 minutes old"; } else { print "This hour is at least 10 minutes old"; } ?>
For simple equality comparisons, use equals()
, which returns a boolean.
Example 6.7. equals() - identify a date or date part
<?php require_once 'Zend/Date.php'; $date = new Zend_Date(); // Comparation of the two dates if ($date->equals(10, Zend_Date::HOUR)) { print "It's 10 o'clock. Time to get to work."; } else { print "It is not 10 o'clock. You can keep sleeping."; } ?>