Checking date & time in PHP

Question

Goal: To create a countdown to our next available live stream.

Details: We live stream six times a week all (PST). 1. Sunday at 8:00 a.m. 2. Sunday at 10:00 a.m. 3. Sunday at 12:00 p.m. 4. Sunday at 6:30 p.m. 5. Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. 6. Saturday at 10:00 a.m.

My approach: I check what day it is and what time it is then create the countdown to the next stream.

I'm sure what I have done can be cleaned up and improved, so tell me how.

<?php
// Countdown Stuff
$year = date(Y);
$month = date(m);
$month_day = date(d);
$day = date(w);
$hour = date(G);
$min = date(i);
$addDay = 0;
// It's Sunday
if ( $day == 0 ) {
 if ( $hour < 8 ) {
 $hour = 8;
 $min = 0;
 } 
 else if ( $hour < 10 ) {
 $hour = 10;
 $min = 0;
 } 
 else if ( $hour < 12 ) {
 $hour = 12;
 $min = 0;
 }
 else if ( $hour <= 18 && $min < 30 ) {
 $hour = 18;
 $min = 30;
 } 
 else {
 $addDay = 3;
 $hour = 19;
 $min = 0;
 }
} 
// It's Monday
else if ( $day == 1 ) {
 $addDay = 2;
 $hour = 19;
 $min = 0;
} 
// It's Tuesday
else if ( $day == 2 ) {
 $addDay = 1;
 $hour = 19;
 $min = 0;
} 
// It's Wednesday
else if ( $day == 3) {
 if ( $hour < 19 ) {
 $hour = 19;
 $min = 0;
 } else {
 $addDay = 3;
 $hour = 10;
 $min = 0;
 }
} 
// It's Thursday
else if ( $day == 4 ) {
 $addDay = 2;
 $hour = 10;
 $min = 0;
} 
// It's Friday
else if ( $day == 5 ) {
 $addDay = 1;
 $hour = 10;
 $min = 0;
} 
// All that's left is Saturday
else {
 if ( $hour < 10 ) {
 $hour = 10;
 $min = 0;
 } else {
 $addDay = 1;
 $hour = 8;
 $min = 0;
 }
}
$build_date = $year . '-' . $month . '-' . $month_day . ' ' . $hour . ':' . $min . ':00';
$date = new DateTime($build_date);
if ( $addDay ) {
 $date->modify("+$addDay day");
}
$date = strtotime($date->format("Y-m-d G:i:s"));
$now = strtotime("now");
$count = $date - $now;
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
var myTime = <?=$count?>;
$('#countdown').countdown({ until: myTime}); 
</script>

Answer 1

To add to Andrew's answer about taking advantage of what type of timestamps can be creating using strtotime(), your code can be reduced to around 25 lines...

<?php
$schedule = array(
 'this Sunday 8am',
 'this Sunday 10am',
 'this Sunday 12pm',
 'this Sunday 6:30pm',
 'this Wednesday 7pm',
 'this Saturday 10am'
 );
$current_time = strtotime('now');
foreach ($schedule as &$val) {
 $val = strtotime($val);
 // fix schedule to next week if time resolved to the past
 if ($val - $current_time < 0) $val += 604800; 
 }
sort($schedule);
$countdown = $schedule[0] - $current_time;
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
 var myTime = <?php echo $countdown; // just personally prefer full tags ?>;
 $('#countdown').countdown({ until: myTime}); 
</script>

To add to visionary-software-solutions' answer, it would be best to store the schedule in a database or a separate xml/text/json/etc type file. This way, you can have staff simply use an internal webform to change schedules instead of having the PHP dev hard-code the changes every time. In that webpage, you can allow staff to only select a weekday and time, and have the page translate that into a string usable by strtotime() in this countdown script.

Edit: fixed strtotime() values. Careful with "this day" vs "next". For some insight into what type of strings strtotime() can take, see: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Date-input-formats.html

Answer 2

I don't have time to look over everything, but I noticed you only set $min to something other than 0 once. You could add the following above $build_date, and then remove all the $min = 0;s, and you'd clear up a few lines:

if($min == date('i')) {
 $min = 0;
}

If it didn't change, which would only happen when you set it to 30 in that one instance, then set it to 0.

Answer 3

A few things that jumped out.

In your date() calls you are passing constants instead of strings e.g. you use date(Y) as opposed to date('Y'), this issues a notice error. PHP will assume that you meant a string, but it is best to be explicit.

The getdate() function will gives you all that information instead of calling date() 6 times.

For what you are wanting to do, I would recommend taking a look at the mktime() function. Once you calculate the next live stream time from your current time, simply pass those values to mktime() and do a time() - mktime() and thats how many seconds you have until the event. mktime produces a UNIX timestamp, so you can pass that to the date() function or into a DateTime object to format, change timezone, etc.

If you are going to have a lot of if/elseif statements like that, it would be cleaner to use a switch statement.

Answer 4

Of course, now if your company decides to change streams from Sunday at 8:00am to Tuesday at 2, you're going to have to go in and hack this code. And if you mess up a ';' or '?php' or junior developer passes "NO WAY" to strtotime()?

Evolve your approach. You should be storing the stream times externally; either in a file or a database. You should be querying those times, doing a strtotime() difference between them and now, then taking the minimum positive element and displaying that.