How to make a link or page expire? with PHP

I want to have a link or page expire at a set time.

How can I do this with PHP?

You know:
You go to one link/page
And after the expired time you get redirected to another page
and can’t access the first page any more.. Its locked out or something..



Thanks!

Maybe use Javascript to time them, and then make a cookie? PHP is only a pre-processor.

Use the date function ...

[code]<?php
// has this expired?
$expire_date = "2007-01-03"; // good until Jan 3/07
$now = date("Y-m-d");
if ($now>$expire_date) {
    header("Location: not_this_page.php");
    die();
}
// and now the unexpired part of the page ...[/code]

Thanks Andy that does the trick!!

I was wondering if their might be a way to have a countdown timer showing till the link/page expires? Make sense?

That will have be doing in javascript which counts down.

well maybe someone will have a php answer as Andy had before...

this wont count down, you'd need javascript for that... but this'll show you how much time is left
[code]
<?
$expires = strtotime("10 September 2007");

if(time()>$expires) echo 'page expired';
else{
$seconds = $expires-time();
while($seconds>15768000){
  $seconds -=15768000;
  $years++;
}
while($seconds>43200){
  $seconds -=43200;
  $days++;
}
while($seconds>3600){
  $seconds -=3600;
  $hours++;
}
while($seconds>60){
  $seconds -=60;
  $minutes++;
}
if(!empty($years)) $x .= ' '.$years.' years';
if(!empty($days)) $x .= ' '.$days.' days';
if(!empty($hours)) $x .= ' '.$hours.' hours';
if(!empty($minutes)) $x .= ' '.$minutes.' minutes';
$x .= ' '.$seconds.' seconds';
echo 'page exires in '.$x;
}
?>
[/code]

If you want something to change after the page has loaded, you need javascript. It's okay, it doesn't bite too hard.

I don't know if PHP can create animated gifs - I know it does gifs, but the animation I don't know about. The only other option I see is to make an animated gif counting down.

Just use javascript ;)