Month conversion to words - datetime

Question

I have dates stored in array for completion status of projects like below
The first two letters are months and other four letters are years
052012(mmyyyy)
$arrDates = array('052012', '042013', '082013', '122013', '022014');
I want this array To get converted to wordings as below
$arrDates = array('Completed', 'Next Six Months', 'Next Year', 'Next Year', 'After 2 Years');
I used a for loop like below for checking completed as below
for($i=0;$i<count($arrDates);$i++)
{
if((date('m') > substr($arrDates[$i], 0,2)) && (date('y') == substr($arrDates[$i], 2,6)))
$strStatus = ' Completed';
}
and I messed up in finding for next year and other two.
Could some one help me in fixing this?

Answer 1

I think you can use DateTime and dateInterval for this :
$currentDate = DateTime::createFromFormat('mY',$arrDates[0]);
$interval = $currentDate->diff(new DateTime('now'),true);
if($interval->invert){
echo 'Completed';
else if($interval->y >= 2 ){
echo 'After 2 Years';
}
else if($interval->y == 1){
echo 'Next Year';
}
else if($interval->m > 6){
echo 'what you want here';
}
else {
echo 'Next six months';
}

Answer 2

I think artragis was on the right track with his answer (+1 for that), but the whole thing should be encapsulated in a function for re-use.
/**
* #param string $expectedDate
* #return string Text summary of time to completion
*/
function completionTimeInWords($expectedDate)
{
$now = new DateTime();
$date = new DateTime();
$date->setTimestamp(strtotime('+1 year'));
$oneYear = $date->diff($now)->days;
$sixMonths = round($oneYear/2);
$date->setTimestamp(strtotime('+2 years'));
$twoYears = $date->diff($now)->days;
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('mY', $expectedDate);
$interval = $now->diff($date);
$completed = (bool)$interval->invert;
$days = $interval->days;
if($completed){
return 'Completed';
} elseif($days <= $sixMonths){
return 'Next Six Months';
} elseif($days > $sixMonths && $days <= $oneYear){
return 'Within a year';
} elseif($days > $oneYear && $days <= $twoYears){
return 'Next Year';
} elseif($days > $twoYears){
return 'After Two Years';
}
}
I tested this with the following code:-
$date = new DateTime();
$date->setTimestamp(strtotime('two weeks ago'));
$arrDates[] = $date->format('mY');
$date->setTimestamp(strtotime('+ 5 months 27 days'));
$arrDates[] = $date->format('mY');
$date->setTimestamp(strtotime('+ 6 months 4 days'));
$arrDates[] = $date->format('mY');
$date->setTimestamp(strtotime('+ 12 months 4 days'));
$arrDates[] = $date->format('mY');
$date->setTimestamp(strtotime('+ 24 months 4 days'));
$arrDates[] = $date->format('mY');
foreach($arrDates as $date){
var_dump(completionTimeInWords($date));
}
and got the following output:-
string(9) "Completed"
string(15) "Next Six Months"
string(13) "Within a year"
string(9) "Next Year"
string(15) "After Two Years"
You may need to do some more testing with edge cases as these can be problematic. For example, most of us would agree that 6 months is 183 days, but PHP may disagree on occasion depending on how many days are in each month between now and 6 months hence (if that makes sense). That is why I have divided a year by 2 to get 6 months, rather than using strtotime().