Pretty PHP Date Ranges

pretty-php-date-ranges.php

<?php 
/**
 * Verbose Beautified Date Range
 *
 * @access public
 * @param mixed $start_date
 * @param mixed $end_date
 * @return $date_range (beautified date range)
 * @license WTFPL
 *
 * @author Jon Brown <[email protected]>
 * @since 1.0
 */
 
function jb_verbose_date_range($start_date = '',$end_date = '') {
 
    $date_range = '';
 
    // If only one date, or dates are the same set to FULL verbose date
    if ( empty($start_date) || empty($end_date) || ( date('FjY',$start_date) == date('FjY',$end_date) ) ) { // FjY == accounts for same day, different time
        $start_date_pretty = date( 'F jS, Y', $start_date );
        $end_date_pretty = date( 'F jS, Y', $end_date );
    } else {
         // Setup basic dates
        $start_date_pretty = date( 'F j', $start_date );
        $end_date_pretty = date( 'jS, Y', $end_date );
        // If years differ add suffix and year to start_date
        if ( date('Y',$start_date) != date('Y',$end_date) ) {
            $start_date_pretty .= date( 'S, Y', $start_date );
        }
 
        // If months differ add suffix and year to end_date
        if ( date('F',$start_date) != date('F',$end_date) ) {
            $end_date_pretty = date( 'F ', $end_date) . $end_date_pretty;
        }
    }
 
    // build date_range return string
    if( ! empty( $start_date ) ) {
          $date_range .= $start_date_pretty;
    }
 
    // check if there is an end date and append if not identical
    if( ! empty( $end_date ) ) {
        if( $end_date_pretty != $start_date_pretty ) {
              $date_range .= ' - ' . $end_date_pretty;
          }
     }
    return $date_range;
}


/* To actually make use of this in WordPress you'd feed it something like this where the dates are stored as unix time stamps

$start_date = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'jb_start_timestamp', true );
$end_date = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'jb_end_timestamp', true );

if ( (!empty($start_date)) || (!empty($end_date)) ) {
     echo '<span class="pretty-date-range"---->';
     echo jb_verbose_date_range( $start_date , $end_date );
     echo '<!-- pretty-date-range -->';
}
*/