Echo Messages By Checking current_time()

Question

Before asking for help I would like to clarify that I don't have advanced skills on PHP. What I want to achieve is to display different messages for every period of time that I set (I need this to LOOP every day). After reading this -> http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/current_time I tried to check:

$my_time = current_time('mysql');
if ($my_time >= 14 && $my_time <= 16) {
    echo 'Do your homework';
} else if ($my_time > 14 && $my_time <= 18) {
    echo 'Clean up the house';
} else if ($my_time > 18 && $my_time <= 20) {
    echo 'Go Shopping';
  .
  .
  .
  .
  .
} else {
    echo 'Lets start over!'
}

Where 14, 16, 18, 20 is the time (24hour format). However this did not work. When I echo current_time('mysql'), it returns the date and the time so even if it could work, it wouldn't loop because of the date, right? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You would just need to format the time that is returned by current_time() with the php date() function like this:

$my_time = date('G', current_time('timestamp'));

The param 'G' tells the function you just want to have the hour part (0 to 23) of the date. Have a look here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

Answer 2

You're right in that it is a WordPress function, and thus I removed my comment. However, this is still only related to WordPress, because of this being a WordPress function.

This has more to do with what a timestamp is and how you can work with it.

$my_time = current_time('timestamp');
$my_hour = date('G', $my_time);
if ($my_hour >= 14 && $my_hour <= 16)
    echo 'Do your homework';
elseif ($my_hour > 14 && $my_hour <= 18)
    echo 'Clean up the house';
elseif ($my_hour > 18 && $my_hour <= 20)
    echo 'Go Shopping';
else
    echo 'Lets start over!'

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References:

• PHP's date function