Create a list of sequential monthly dates in PHP given initial date and quantity

Question

I'm working on a little payments system and must generate a list of payment days (monthly) given an initial date and number of payments. So, for example:

Given:

startday: 2015/06/22
qtty: 6

I should get the day from initial date (22) and generate a list of 6 sequential monthly dates:

• 2015/06/22 (if initial date should be included, and is > than today)
• 2015/07/22
• 2015/08/24
• 2015/09/22
• 2015/10/22
• 2015/11/23

As you can see, generated dates should not be weekends (sat/dom) and -if possible- nor holidays

Is there any function that could help me achieve this? TIA

Answer 1

I think this might do what you want, including holidays:

<?php

$startday = strtotime("2015/08/24");
$qtty = 5;

// Add as many holidays as desired.
$holidays = array();
$holidays[] = "4 Jul"; 
$holidays[] = "25 Dec";


for( $i = 0; $i < $qtty; $i++ ) {
    $next_month = strtotime("+".$i." month", $startday); // Also works with "+ 30 days"
    while( in_array(date("d M", $next_month), $holidays)) { // Is holiday
        $next_month = strtotime("+ 1 day", $next_month);

        if( date("N", $next_month) > 5 ) { // Is weekend
            $next_month = strtotime("next Monday", $next_month); // or "previous Friday"
        }
   }
    echo(date( "Y-m-d", $next_month) . '</br>');
}

?>

Will echo

2015-08-25
2015-09-25
2015-10-26 // Because of weekend
2015-11-25
2015-12-28 // Because of Christmas and weekend

And with a start date of 2015/10/31 the output will be:

2015-11-02 // Because of weekend
2015-12-01 // Because the 31st of Nov is the 1st of Dec
2015-12-31
2016-02-01 // Because the weekend
2016-03-02 // Because the 31st of Feb is the 2st of Mars (as 2016 is leep year)

As a good extra tips, depending on how you want to solve the 31st of Jan problem, if you want the last of each month, you can always use the following:

$first_of_the_month = strtotime(date("Y-m-1", $startday));
$next_month = strtotime("+ 1 month", $first_of_the_month);
$last_of_the_month = date("Y-m-t", $next_month);
echo($last_of_the_month); // 2015-09-30