Fetch a range of dates using jQueryUI datepicker and php, in Spanish

Question

I'm trying to save a range of dates that will be filled in by the user, via 2 datepickers that were previously translated to Spanish.

The problem is that when I use strtotime() on the dates it takes the month as the day and vice versa.

Example: I choose day 27 month 05 and year 2017, but the return value is an incorrect date format since the month is 27. If I choose day 01 month 05 year 2017 then it shows in the array as day 05 month 01 and year 2017.

Here are the functions I use to take the dates from the input texts, and to generate the range between the dates

function takedates() {
    if(isset($_POST['repS'])){      
        $dateStart = $_POST['txtdesde'];
        $dateEnd = $_POST['txthasta'];
        $fechaArray = generafechas($dateStart,$dateEnd);
    }

function generafechas($date1,$date2){
    $fecharray = array();
    if (is_string($date1) === true){            
        $deit1 = strftime("%d-%m-%Y",strtotime($date1));            
    }
    if (is_string($date2) === true){            
        $date2 = strftime("%d-%m-%Y",strtotime($date2));            
    }
    do {
        $fecharray[] = date("m-d-Y", $date1);
         $date1 = strtotime("+1 day", $date1);  
    } while($date1 <= $date2);
    return $fecharray;
}
?>

My question is: How do i fill the array with the dates in the spanish date format?

PS: I've already used setLocale(LC_TIME,'es_ES') in the file where I'm using these functions, and the input shows the dates like this "dd/mm/yyyy"

Answer 1

strtotime does not take your locale into consideration when parsing the datetime string. If you use a date separated by slashes it is assumed to be American-style m/d/y. If you use a date separated by periods (or dashes if the year is four digits), it is assumed to be rest-of-the-world-style (d.m.y or d-m-Y). (Note that if you only use a two digit year and use dashes, PHP will try try to parse it as y-m-d.)

Instead of strtotime, you should use date-create-from-format / DateTime::createFromFormat to get a DateTime object, then build your date string from that.

UPDATE BASED ON COMMENTS: In order to get the output you want, you need to use the intl extension's IntlDateFormatter class to make the output.

To modify your code above (untested):

function generafechas($date1,$date2){
    $fecharray = array();

    if (is_string($date1) && is_string($date2)){
        // These lines assume the input is formatted `day-month-year`,
        // with 2-digit day and month, and 4-digit year.
        $date1 = DateTime::createFromFormat('d-m-Y', $date1)
        $date2 = DateTime::createFromFormat('d-m-Y', $date2)
    } else {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException('Must provide two date strings');
    }

    // Create the formatter
    $formatter = IntlDateFormatter::create('es_ES', null, null, null, null, "d 'de' MMMM 'del' yyyy");

    do {
        // This line prints the first date in the format you chose above
        $fecharray[] = $formatter->format($date1);
        $date1->add(new DateInterval("P1D")); // `P1D` means "Duration of 1 Day" in the ISO 8601 standard
    } while($date1 <= $date2);

    return $fecharray;
}

If you provide the Locale along with the data, you can change what format string is used in createFromFormat as needed.