Dates

As a rule of thumb, always pass dates to Smarty as timestamps. This allows template designers to use date_format for full control over date formatting, and also makes it easy to compare dates if necessary.

NOTE: As of Smarty 1.4.0, you can pass dates to Smarty as unix timestamps, mysql timestamps, or any date parsable by strtotime().

{$startDate|date_format}

OUTPUT:

Jan 4, 2001


{$startDate|date_format:"%Y/%m/%d"}

OUTPUT:

2001/01/04


{if $date1 < $date2}
	...
{/if}

When using {html_select_date} in a template, The programmer will most likely want to convert the output from the form back into timestamp format. Here is a function to help you with that.

// this assumes your form elements are named
// startDate_Day, startDate_Month, startDate_Year

$startDate = makeTimeStamp($startDate_Year,$startDate_Month,$startDate_Day);

function makeTimeStamp($year="",$month="",$day="")
{
	if(empty($year))
		$year = strftime("%Y");
	if(empty($month))
		$month = strftime("%m");
	if(empty($day))
		$day = strftime("%d");

	return mktime(0,0,0,$month,$day,$year);
}