Make Select Sticky

[Paul_Wilkins]

@Stormrider

function Is_Leap_Year($year) {    
    # if its divisable by 4..         is it divisable by 100 OR 400
    return (($year % 4 == 0) && ($year % 100 != 0 || $year % 400 ==  0));
} # end of function Is_Leap_Year

What if we don’t reinvent the wheel, and make use of the built-in “is leap year” that the date object contains, via the ‘L’ format character

function is_leap_year($year) {
    // L is 1 for a leap year, otherwise it's 0
    return date('L', strtotime('01/01/' . $year)) > 0;
}

[Stormrider]

Indeed, but I’m assuming this is a learning exercise more than anything, otherwise I’d also just use checkdate() as well

[hash]

Wouldn’t that be cheating?

There was a built in way to do this I think, but we are not allowed to use it. We have to write the function myself.

[Paul_Wilkins]

@Stormrider

Indeed, but I’m assuming this is a learning exercise more than anything, otherwise I’d also just use checkdate() as well

Curses! I knew there was an easier way

[system]

@Stormrider

# constants
define('ONE', 1);
define('TWENTY_EIGHT', 28);
define('TWENTY_NINE', 29);
define('THIRTY', 30);
define('THIRTY_ONE', 31);

This bit is really unnecessary. When is ‘TWENTY_NINE’ ever going to be redefined as ‘76’ for example?

I understand that the entire point there was that I was trying to learn how to use constants, and I wanted to show the instructor that I actually listened to the lecture when he talked about them. I wanted to use a little bit of everything in the program.

@Stormrider

    # check to see if the month should have 30 days in it...
[...]
     # check to see if the month should have 28 days in it...
[...]
     # check the rest of the months to make sure they have 31 days in them...

For this bit, and to replace the above bit, why not use an array that stores the number of days in each month? Eg:

$daysinmonth = array(1 => 31,
                     2 => 28,
                     3 => 31,
                     [...]
                     12 => 31);

if (is_leap_year($year)) {
  $daysinmonth[2] = 29;
}

Then it is just a simple case of checking the appropriate array element for the number of days - if ($day <= $daysinmonth[$month]) { or something like that.

Remember this was a FIRST PHP program I have ever written, there are a lot of ways it could be done, but we haven’t even covered arrays yet and multi-demential arrays are another story completely. The first program used arrays because that assignment was allready written for one combo box.

@Stormrider

Finally, I’m not sure why, but you seem to be returned values from functions through variables passed in by reference - a much better way
(and the usual way) to do this would be to use ‘return’:

function Is_Leap_Year($year) {    
    # if its divisable by 4..         is it divisable by 100 OR 400
    if (($year % 4 == 0) && ($year % 100 != 0 || $year % 400 == 0)) {
        return true;
    }
    else {
        return false;
    }

} # end of function Is_Leap_Year

…which can be shortened further to…

function Is_Leap_Year($year) {    
    # if its divisable by 4..         is it divisable by 100 OR 400
    return (($year % 4 == 0) && ($year % 100 != 0 || $year % 400 ==  0));
} # end of function Is_Leap_Year

Then you can use the function within an if statement without having to prepare variables etc first:

if (Is_Leap_Year($year)) {
//code
}

I used both ways. I was trying to learn how to make a function with a return variable and how to make a function that used a reference. The instructor talked about that similar to ByVal and ByRef in Visual Basic, I was trying to test it out. I wanted to see how the &$ operator worked.

@pmw57

What if we don’t reinvent the wheel, and make use of the built-in “is leap year” that the date object contains, via the ‘L’ format character

function is_leap_year($year) {
    // L is 1 for a leap year, otherwise it's 0
    return date('L', strtotime('01/01/' . $year)) > 0;
}

Because I would have gotten an F on the assignment. It was a first PHP assignment and we covered a few operators and “if statements” in the lecture. I was supposed to use those methods we talked about to build the assignment. The instructor told us that there was built in ways to do this but we were not allowed to use them because the entire point of the assignment was to learn how to write a function ourself to see if we understood the code. It would be simple to get that code from a website and copy/paste it. And the 2 lines of code really doesn’t give him anything to grade.

–

I know the assignment was not perfect but it was the first time ever even using PHP. I’ve never even seen the language before that assignment so it was supposed to be learning different things. It wasn’t going to be professionally done.

I also have to take a UML course and OOP course and those will get the code looking a lot cleaner. I think I did really good since I’ve never even seen PHP before.