Ah never mind about my previous post. Predictably enough, it was the
cause of a small typo thereby preventing me from seeing the correct
data.

Anyway, I used Alvaro's solution and it works like a charm. Fewer
lines of code and no annoying conversions to unix timestamps and
calculating from there. so that is awesome!

So for any newbies out there still following along, the final code the
worked for me is:

$username = $_GET["username"];

$db = new ps_DBnew;
//$q = "SELECT username, DATE_FORMAT(banned_until,'%Y-%m-%d') FROM
banned WHERE username = '$username'";
$q = "SELECT username, IF(banned_until > NOW(), 'Y', 'N') AS
still_banned FROM banned WHERE username = '$username'";
$db->query($q);
$db->next_record();

$banned_user = $db->f("still_banned");

if ($db->num_rows() > 0) {
echo "$banned_user";
//this returns a Y or N string which may be used in an "if"
statement if the condition is met or not
}


Hope this thread helps someone else in a similar position.

-oedipa


On May 8, 2:58 pm, Oedipa <oed...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey,
>
> Thanks to everyone who weighed in on this. It's very much
> appreciated. And yes, as Lars figured out, I AM getting a value back
> from the DB. Unfortunately, I have no way to control how that date
> goes in, but am now looking into how to extract it to match to the PHP
> date.
>
> So far and very sadly, none of the SQL solutions posed here work
> verbatim, but it gives me a point for research. So far I can't get
> the time limitation to pull the username out of the DB. Maybe I'll
> wander over to the MYSQL group and ask if I'm doing anything wrong
> syntactically.
>
> So far these two queried are doing nothing.
>
> $q = "SELECT username, DATE_FORMAT(banned_until,'%Y-%m-%d')
> banned_until FROM banned WHERE username = '$username'";
>
> OR
>
> $q = "SELECT username, banned_until, IF(banned_until > NOW(), 'Y',
> 'N') AS still_banned FROM banned WHERE username = '$username'";
>
> which is weird. I made sure the username variable is being passed and
> that it correctly matches a value in the DB. So it's something else.
> Dunno.
>
> But again, thank you for the input all! If you think of anything else
> I could do to twea it, I'm all ears!
>
> -Oedipa Maas
>
> On May 8, 6:40 am, Captain Paralytic <paul_laut...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On 8 May, 09:34, Captain Paralytic <paul_laut...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > On 8 May, 09:14, Captain Paralytic <paul_laut...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On 8 May, 05:21, oed...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > > > Hi all-
>
> > > > > I've searched for at least an hour tonight before posting this
> > > > > question into here. It's one of those questions that seemed simple AT
> > > > > FIRST, but I'm having a hard time filtering the info I get on all the
> > > > > date formats and how to compare them for my little script.
>
> > > > > This script is to disallow a user into an area who has been bannedfor
> > > > > a certain amount of time. So when the user logs in again, we compare
> > > > > the current date to the one the admin put into MYSQL and come up with
> > > > > an answer (that it is the date they are allowed back in or not).
> > > > > Also, I have no control over how the data is inserted on my part,
> > > > > since another company is doing it. So I can't change the date format
> > > > > on that end.
>
> > > > > Here is the code I'm working with so far:
>
> > > > > $username = $_GET["username"];
> > > > > //declare all the db stuff, etc above this line
> > > > > $q = "SELECT * FROM banned WHERE username = '$username'";
> > > > > $db->query($q);
> > > > > $db->next_record();
>
> > > > > $banned_user = $db->f("username");
> > > > > $banned_until = $db->f("banned_until");
>
> > > > > if ($db->num_rows() > 0) {
>
> > > > > //$date1 = date("Y-m-d",$banned_until); this returns a datestamp
> > > > > of 1969-12-31 instead of 2008-05-05 so instead I'm back to the line
> > > > > below which just pulls the banned_until date AND timestamp from the
> > > > > db.
>
> > > > > $date1 = $banned_until;
>
> > > > > $date2 = date('Y-m-d'); //this gives me exactly what I want.I
> > > > > just want the banned_until to match the format
>
> > > > > echo "$date1 compare to $date2";
>
> > > > > //this returns a date string that currently looks like: 2008-05-05
> > > > > 18:11:19 compare to 2008-05-08. I can't compare this currently.
>
> > > > > //Solution??? I want to remove the timestamp and just work with
> > > > > comparing the date in Y-m-d format to see if they are equal or not..
>
> > > > > } else {
>
> > > > > echo $banned_until; //simply displays the banned_until stamp which
> > > > > is 2008-05-05 18:11:19
>
> > > > > }
>
> > > > > So how do I normalize the two date stamps and then compare them
> > > > > properly to allow a user back in?
>
> > > > > Many thanks for ANY help on this!!!!!!!!
>
> > > > > -Oedipa Maas
>
> > > > This is so simple:
>
> > > > $q = "SELECT username, DATE_FORMAT(banned_until,'%Y-%m-%d') FROM
> > > > banned WHERE username = '$username'";
>
> > > Oops missed a bit:
> > > $q = "SELECT username, DATE_FORMAT(banned_until,'%Y-%m-%d')
> > > banned_until FROM banned WHERE username = '$username'";
>
> > However, having read Álvaro's reply, I totally agree that this
> > comparison should be done completely in the SQL.