Send Birthday Wishes in PHP

How to Send Birthday Wishes in PHP: Checking Age and Validating Birthdates.

In our previous post on how to validate date of birth using PHP.

Today we’ll explored the importance of ensuring the accuracy of birthdates for various applications, such as age verification and birthday wishes. Also, we’re going to take it a step further and implement a feature that sends birthday messages only when it’s the user’s actual birthday.

Why Send Birthday Messages?

The Significance of Personalized Birthday Messages

Now, let’s delve into why personalized birthday messages matter in web development:

1. Enhanced User Engagement: Birthday messages make users feel special and appreciated, increasing their engagement with your platform.
2. Improved User Retention: Acknowledging birthdays can lead to improved user retention rates as users are more likely to return to a platform that cares about their milestones.
3. Community Building: Personalized messages foster a sense of community among your users, strengthening their connection to your brand.
4. Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Happy users are more likely to recommend your platform to others, leading to organic growth.
5. Data Accuracy: Date validation ensures data accuracy, preventing errors in future transactions and age verification processes.

The Birthday Wish Logic in PHP

We’ve created a PHP function called birthday_wish that checks if the current day and month match the ones in the given date of birth. If they do, it triggers a birthday message.

Here’s how the function works:

<?php 
function birthday_wish($date){
    $dateparameters = array();
    $date = preg_replace("/[^0-9\']/", ",", $date);    
    $date = explode(',', $date);
    $wish = '';
    if(count($date) == 3){
        for ($i = 0; $i < 3; ++$i) {
            $dateparameters []= $date[$i];
        }

        $year = $dateparameters[0];
        $month = $dateparameters[1];
        $actualmonth = $dateparameters[1];
        $actualday = $dateparameters[2];
        $actualdate = $year.'-'.$month.'-'.$actualday;
        $day = cal_days_in_month(CAL_GREGORIAN, $month, $year);

        $day = range(1, $day); // day range
        $month = range(1, 12); // month range

        if(in_array($actualday, $day) && in_array($actualmonth, $month)){ 
            // Check if actual month and day are in range of days that should be in the provided month of the given year
            // If it's the user's birthday, set the $wish variable to 1
            if(date('m-d') == ($actualmonth.'-'.$actualday)){
                $wish = 1;
            }
        }
    }
    return $wish;
}
?>

How to Use the PHP Birthday Wish Function

Now, let’s demonstrate how to use the birthday_wish function to send birthday messages:

<?php
$date= '2010/09/21';
if(birthday_wish($date) == 1){
    echo 'Happy birthday to you!<br>';
    echo 'You were born on this day '.date('l', strtotime(date('Y-m-d'))).', '.date('dS').' '.date('F', strtotime($date)).' being '.date('l', strtotime($date)).' of the same month in the year '.explode('/',$date)[0];
}else{
    echo 'Hey!<br>';
    echo 'You are not born on this day '.date('l', strtotime(date('Y-m-d'))).', '.date('dS').' '.date('F', strtotime($date)).' '.explode('/',$date)[0];
}
?>

Conclusion

By implementing this feature, you can enhance user engagement by sending personalized birthday messages on their special day. This adds a touch of personalization to your platform and fosters a sense of community among your users.

Birthday messages are just one example of how you can use date validation in PHP to create dynamic and engaging user experiences. Explore different applications and functionalities to make your web development projects more user-friendly and enjoyable.

In future posts, we’ll delve into similar topics using other programming languages like jQuery and Python, so stay tuned for more exciting insights and tutorials!