Date API: Proper method of parsing dates

Question

I'm working on a simple event sign up module. The functionality is split in two modules, one which provides an Event content type with title, description and date (from - to) fields, and the second with sign up functionality and sign up window dates for Event content type. The problem is that I don't seem to find a way to properly parse and do comparisons and calculations on the event/signup dates.

Date API documention is quite light on specifics on this area, so it has not been much of a help.

• How can I use the Date API to obtain DateObject from the event date stored on the node?
• How can I determine whether the stored event is an all day event?

Answer 1

How can I use the Date API to obtain DateObject from the event date stored on the node?

Offhand, I'm not 100% sure the right way to do this. It sounds like you want to use the DateObject to perform some calculations -- not just to run through a theme field_formatter. This date issue thread has some code kinda trying to use date fields and their values, but doesnt help much.

Simply because I can understand it (and have used this module myself) I recommend trying out the sub-module of Date, date_api, and an additional 3rd party module: field_extract.

With field extract you can easily (and correctly) access a fields value for instance as a timestamp:

  // Extract from a date, this extracts the first value and provides a
  // formatted date output, uses the specified format, by name.
  $event_timestamp = field_extract_value('node', $node, 'field_event_time', 0, array('format' => 'timestamp'));

You can then use the DateAPI to create a DateObject:

$date = new DateObject($event_timestamp);

How can I determine whether the stored event is an all day event?

Use the date_is_all_day() function found in the date_api module, it compares 2 date fields to check if they encompass a full day.

 function date_is_all_day($string1, $string2, $granularity = 'second', $increment = 1) { ... }