Using Form Fields for Date Selection

<select name="month"><?php
  for ($i = 1; $i <= 12; $i++) {
    $monthname = date('F', mktime(12, 0, 0, $i, 1,
       2005));
    echo "<option value=\"$i\">$monthname</option>";
    }
?></select>

If you want to offer an HTML form to select a date, like many hotel- and flight-booking services offer, you can use the various parameters of date(); loop through all months of the year; and, therefore, create a selection list of days, months, and years. The preceding code contains the code for this; see Figure 3.4 for the result.

Selecting a Date Using an HTML Form (dateselection.php; excerpt)

<form method="post" action="<?php echo
   htmlspecialchars($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']); ?>">
  <select name="day"><?php
    for ($i = 1; $i <= 31; $i++) {
      echo "<option value=\"$i\">$i</option>\n";
    }
  ?></select>
  <select name="month"><?php
    for ($i = 1; $i <= 12; $i++) {
      $monthname = date('F', mktime(12, 0, 0, $i, 1,
         2005));
      echo "<option value=\"$i\">$monthname</
        option>";
    }
  ?></select>
  <select name="year"><?php
    for ($i = 2005; $i <= 2010; $i++) {
      echo "<option value=\"$i\">$i</option>";
    }
  ?></select>
</form>

Figure 3.4. The month names were automatically generated.

function microtimestamp() {
  return microtime(true);
}