How to pull entries with Date Created > start and < end?

Question

I'm building an export plugin in Craft 2 and the entries are saved by the front-end and are never enabled, so no Post Date. I have a form with the forms.date selectors that sends a start and end date to my controller. How can I filter on Date Created? After and before only works on Post Date.

I have this for now:

$criteria = craft()->elements->getCriteria(ElementType::Entry);
$criteria->section = 'contestEntries';
// Date Created >= start_date
// Date Created <= end_date
$criteria->status = null;
$entries = $criteria->find();

Thank you

Answer 1

Here is syntax you can use to search a date field between two dates.

$startDate = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($settings["start_date"]["date"]));
$endDate = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($settings["end_date"]["date"]));

$criteria->dateCreated = ['and','>= '.$startDate, '<= '.$endDate];