I'm looking for a way to get time input from a user to be inserted into a database as a MySQL TIME format, which is yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.

However, the yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss is not intuitive... and is difficult to validate.

What's the most intuitive way for the user to input this time? How do I validate it is correct (in the right format)?

Thanks so much in advance.

I'm not sure if there is a 'most intuitive way' to have users input time. You could use a separate text field or dropdown for each time field (year, month, day, etc). Or you could have them input a single string which could then be parsed.

As far as validation goes, you can use checkdate for the year month and day fields. For the hours, minutes and seconds you may have to validate it manually, but that should be simple enough.

After you've done all of your validating and parsing you can use the separate time fields to construct a mysql formatted time string.

If you can settle on a particular format for inputting the time I can post a code example.

Perhaps I'll just have them input a single string. Seems quicker for the user that way, instead of making him or her move the mouse and click on menus.

So, if I want them to input the time as yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm am/pm, i.e. 2011-06-23 2:30 pm or 2010-06-12 11:44 am and then convert this to the format I want, how would I go about doing that?

Sorry, php newbie. Thanks for all the help!

2nd EDIT: I think most users would not find it easier to write the whole date/time as a long string. That requires them to "think more" and to format it properly, instead of just selecting from a predefined list.

EDIT: NullPointer got to it before me, but I'll post it anyway since I already wrote it :P

Personally I think (one of) the easiest ways would be to have drop down menus for the date (year, month, day), and normal text boxes for time (hour, minute, seconds), each with a width of two characters.

Now, for the validation part.
I would run them through a regex, and use check_date() to validate the date. I'm no regex expert but I think this shoud do it.

PHP Code:

// Fetch the data and store them in $year, $month, $day, $hours, $minutes, $seconds
$time_pattern = "/^(([0-1]?[0-9])|(2[0-3])):[0-5][0-9]:[0-5][0-9]$/";
$date_pattern = "/^[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}$/";

$time_str = "$hours:$minutes:$seconds";
$date_str = "$year-$month-$day";

if (preg_match($time_pattern, $time_str) != 1) {
   // incorrect time format, do something
}
if (preg_match($date_pattern, $date_str) != 1) {
   // incorect date format, do something
}
if (!check_date($month, $day, $year)) {
   // invalid date, do something
} 


Don't give the users a text box to input dates, present them with select elements for the input.

@lizciz your solution gives me an idea on how to do this. Thank so much for the help, both of you!

Be sure to take a look at strtotime