PHP preg_match与正则表达式[重复]

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• Validate date format in php 7 answers

function validateDate( $date )
{ 
    echo $date;
    //2012-08-24 20:30:00
    if(preg_match('/^([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2}) ([1-2]{1})([0-9]{1}):([0-5]{1})([0-9]{1}):([0-5]{1})([0-9]{1})$/', $date) >= 1)
    {
        return true;
    }
    else
    {
        return false;
    }
}

This always returns false. I used an only tool to build the regular expression and it was working fine there. Trouble started when I added the "/" to the regex. Somehow PHP seems to require these but I dont know why and I dont know why it breaks my regex.

It should return TRUE for sth. like "2012-08-24 20:30:00" and FALSE for "asdf2012-08-24 20:30:00asdf" or anything thats not acording to my regex

Thanks in advance!

-----------------------EDIT Thanks for all your answers!

As some users pointed out my function returns true for the sample date "2012-08-24 20:30:00". However it does that only if i manually set $date='2012-08-24 20:30:00'. If i call the function elsewhere in my code with the exact same string it returns false. Does anyone know why?

-----------------------EDIT2

Yea sorry for wasting your time, it was in fact some whitespace that was added to the string. using trim() on my date before calling my function gives the correct result now.

thanks everyone!

</div>

Answer 1

Why use regex? Use DateTime class.

function validateDate($date, $format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s')
{
    $d = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, $date);
    return $d && $d->format($format) == $date;
}

You can use this function for all kind of date/time validations. Examples:

var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-28 12:12:12')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-30 12:12:12')); # false
var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-28', 'Y-m-d')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('28/02/2012', 'd/m/Y')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('30/02/2012', 'd/m/Y')); # false
var_dump(validateDate('14:50', 'H:i')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('14:77', 'H:i')); # false
var_dump(validateDate(14, 'H')); # true
var_dump(validateDate('14', 'H')); # true

var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-28T12:12:12+02:00', 'Y-m-d\TH:i:sP')); # true
# or
var_dump(validateDate('2012-02-28T12:12:12+02:00', DateTime::ATOM)); # true

var_dump(validateDate('Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:12:12 +0200', 'D, d M Y H:i:s O')); # true
# or
var_dump(validateDate('Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:12:12 +0200', DateTime::RSS)); # true
var_dump(validateDate('Tue, 27 Feb 2012 12:12:12 +0200', DateTime::RSS)); # false
# ...