Issue with ISO date validation

[MrZogs]

Hi all,

I’m having some issues with validating a date using Zend_Validate_Date and was hoping if anyone could shed some light on the matter.

Situation is as follows:
1) Javascript application send a date (along with some other data) to server
2) Server needs to validate date before storing

The date being sent is formatted like:
2009-10-08T20:02:54
This is an ISO date as far as I can tell.. (please correct me if I’m wrong)

So I have a validator set up as follows:
$format = Zend_Date::ISO_8601;
$v = new Zend_Validate_Date(array('format' => $format));

Unfortunately,
$v->isValid($date);
Returns false

So I’ve been digging a bit and found that it fails in
Zend_Date::isDate
on line 4600 (latest trunk) where it fails to parse the input date with the given format.
I figured out that this happens because when you specify ISO as format it uses:
‘dd mm yy’
as token to parse the date. Which obviously fails since the provided date has a different format.

Now I can easily solve my initial problem by using a different format to check against. But I’m curious
why it behaves this way. Since (it think) one would expect that if you provide an ISO date, and tell the
validator to validate against ISO, it should pass validation.
Or am I just missing something?

I’ve put a small snippet on pastebin with an example to illustrate my problem.
http://pastebin.com/m17450dc1

regards,
Rocco Bruyn

[padraicb]

It is an ISO date as far as I can tell. It does have one subtle issue though if you are sending this between servers - it contains no timezone data. As a result, it would always be assumed to be a time within the local timezone for the current server. This is a guess, but does it pass validation if you add a timezone offset? If you know for sure it is UTC, just append "Z", otherwise an offset such as -05:00 (the offset from UTC to EST). Remember, without a timezone offset, the date is only good for the server generating it.

Paddy

 

Pádraic Brady

http://blog.astrumfutura.com
http://www.survivethedeepend.com
OpenID Europe Foundation Irish Representative

---

From: MrZogs <[hidden email]>
To: [hidden email]
Sent: Mon, October 12, 2009 9:24:02 AM
Subject: [fw-i18n] Issue with ISO date validation


Hi all,

I’m having some issues with validating a date using Zend_Validate_Date and
was hoping if anyone could shed some light on the matter.

Situation is as follows:
1)    Javascript application send a date (along with some other data) to server
2)    Server needs to validate date before storing

The date being sent is formatted like:
2009-10-08T20:02:54
This is an ISO date as far as I can tell.. (please correct me if I’m wrong)

So I have a validator set up as follows:
$format = Zend_Date::ISO_8601;
$v = new Zend_Validate_Date(array('format' => $format));

Unfortunately,
$v->isValid($date);
Returns false

So I’ve been digging a bit and found that it fails in
Zend_Date::isDate
on line 4600 (latest trunk) where it fails to parse the input date with the
given format.
I figured out that this happens because when you specify ISO as format it
uses:
‘dd mm yy’
as token to parse the date. Which obviously fails since the provided date
has a different format.

Now I can easily solve my initial problem by using a different format to
check against. But I’m curious
why it behaves this way. Since (it think) one would expect that if you
provide an ISO date, and tell the
validator to validate against ISO, it should pass validation.
Or am I just missing something?

I’ve put a small snippet on pastebin with an example to illustrate my
problem.
http://pastebin.com/m17450dc1 http://pastebin.com/m17450dc1

regards,
Rocco Bruyn

--
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[MrZogs]

Pádraic,

Thanks for your reply.
Just tried it with:

$date = '2009-10-08T20:02:54+01:00'

but to to avail..

Any other suggestions?

Rocco

Pádraic Brady wrote

It is an ISO date as far as I can tell. It does have one subtle issue though if you are sending this between servers - it contains no timezone data. As a result, it would always be assumed to be a time within the local timezone for the current server. This is a guess, but does it pass validation if you add a timezone offset? If you know for sure it is UTC, just append "Z", otherwise an offset such as -05:00 (the offset from UTC to EST). Remember, without a timezone offset, the date is only good for the server generating it.

Paddy

 Pádraic Brady

http://blog.astrumfutura.com
http://www.survivethedeepend.com
OpenID Europe Foundation Irish Representative





________________________________
From: MrZogs <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Sent: Mon, October 12, 2009 9:24:02 AM
Subject: [fw-i18n] Issue with ISO date validation


Hi all,

I’m having some issues with validating a date using Zend_Validate_Date and
was hoping if anyone could shed some light on the matter.

Situation is as follows:
1)    Javascript application send a date (along with some other data) to server
2)    Server needs to validate date before storing

The date being sent is formatted like:
2009-10-08T20:02:54
This is an ISO date as far as I can tell.. (please correct me if I’m wrong)

So I have a validator set up as follows:
$format = Zend_Date::ISO_8601;
$v = new Zend_Validate_Date(array('format' => $format));

Unfortunately,
$v->isValid($date);
Returns false

So I’ve been digging a bit and found that it fails in
Zend_Date::isDate
on line 4600 (latest trunk) where it fails to parse the input date with the
given format.
I figured out that this happens because when you specify ISO as format it
uses:
‘dd mm yy’
as token to parse the date. Which obviously fails since the provided date
has a different format.

Now I can easily solve my initial problem by using a different format to
check against. But I’m curious
why it behaves this way. Since (it think) one would expect that if you
provide an ISO date, and tell the
validator to validate against ISO, it should pass validation.
Or am I just missing something?

I’ve put a small snippet on pastebin with an example to illustrate my
problem.
http://pastebin.com/m17450dc1 http://pastebin.com/m17450dc1 

regards,
Rocco Bruyn

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Issue-with-ISO-date-validation-tp25852083p25852083.html
Sent from the Zend I18N/Locale mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

-----
Pádraic Brady

Blog: http://blog.astrumfutura.com
Free Zend Framework Book: http://www.survivethedeepend.com
OpenID Europe Foundation - Irish Representative