DevOps, CI/CD and Automation

I have been stumped for several days on this problem.

My PHP script has an integrated HTML form.

One input field is for a date in format DD-MON-YY. Input type is text.

Everything else in my scripts works and loads fine...except the date variable containing the user's input.

I have tried setting a PHP environment value like so:

putenv("NLS_DATE_FORMAT=DD-MON-RR");

That does not work.

I have tried using the TO_DATE function in my INSERT statement's VALUES clause like so:

TO_DATE(<my $_POST['input Name attribute value']>,'DD-MON-RR')

That did not work.

I tried setting the date mask to its own variable, like so:

TO_DATE(<my $_POST['input Name attribute value']>,'$datemask varialbe')

That did not work.

If I hard code a date into the VALUES clause, like so:

'26-OCT-07'

That of course works.

FYI, I have written and use several dozen PHP scripts against an Oracle database, including a handful of INSERT scripts. They all work fine.

This is my first script taking user input including date fields.

I suspect I am missing something simple but cannot for the life of me figure it out.

Thanks for any assistance.

I find very, very little on the web about entering Oracle date data through PHP.