Help with Events date output please (PHP)

Hi, with my events-teaser template I'd like to achieve the following output for an event date:

Fri 05 Jun 2015 - Sat 06 Jun 2015

I've got the following code so far, but:

• the day name is output in full rather than a 3-letter abbreviation – how can this be done?

• are there any improvements / simplifications that can be made to the code?

Many thanks for any help. I'm just not that knowledgeable with PHP.

PHP Code:

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<?php if ($this->header): ?>
    <?php if ($this->firstDay): ?><span class="start-date"><?php echo $this->firstDay; ?>
    <?php endif; ?> 
    <?php echo $this->firstDate; ?><?php if ($this->endDate): ?></span>
    - <span class="end-date"><?php echo $GLOBALS['TL_LANG']['DAYS_SHORT'][Date('w', $this->end)] . " " . Date('d M Y', $this->end); ?></span>
    <?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

---

Your HTML output with this code is not valid.

Use this code in your template to show the templates variables in front end.

PHP Code:

---

<?php $this->showTemplateVars(); ?>

---

You see that $this->span is preconfigured. So you have to build up your on string here. You can do it with.

PHP Code:

---

<?php echo Date::parse('D d M Y', $this->startDate) . ' - ' . Date::parse('D d M Y', $this->endDate); ?>

---

http://de1.php.net/manual/de/function.date.php

Second parameter of parse ($this->startDate) has to be a unix timestamp (a long integer number).

Watch out that it fits to all event types. Maybe you have to put in a lot of IF clauses to achieve that.

The long day name in your example output is done by $this->firstDay which is also preconfigured.