Split a single date range into two separate date range with a given date

Question

I'm trying to split a single date range into two separate date ranges with a given last date using PHP.

For example, this date range '2016-01-01 00:00:00' to '2019-02-14 23:59:59' will have these two date ranges below. Given that the separate date is 2018-01-01.

1. '2016-01-01 00:00:00' - '2017-12-31 23:59:59'
2. '2018-01-01 00:00:00' - '2019-02-14 23:59:59'

Sample code like below.

$start = '2016-01-01 00:00:00';
$end = '2019-02-14 23:59:59';
$sepDate = '2018-01-01';
$dateRange = separateDate($start, $end, $sepDate);

function separateDate($start, $end, $sepDate){
    //separate date function 
}

Output:
$dateRange[0]['start']  //'2016-01-01 00:00:00'
$dateRange[0]['end']    //'2017-12-31 23:59:59'

$dateRange[1]['start']  //'2018-01-01 00:00:00'
$dateRange[1]['end']    //'2019-02-14 23:59:59'

Answer 1

This can be done fairly simple. Just convert the separator to a timestamp, this way you can subtract one second to get the end date of the first period. The rest is pretty straightforward.

function separateDate($start, $end, $sepDate){
    return [
        [
            "start" => strtotime($start),
            "end" => strtotime($sepDate) - 1
        ],
        [
            "start" => strtotime($sepDate),
            "end" => strtotime($end)
        ]
    ];
}

I converted all datetimes to timestamps to keep the output consistent. It's not that hard to turn them into dates again.