Difference between two dates...

[Anon]

Hi,

I have two dates from a MySQL database:

2001-03-15 and 2000-11-28

Is there a function that will tell me the number of days between the first and second date? I'd need the answer in days.

Thanks!

[[deleted]]

There is no function persay, thou I find that converting the two dates into unix timestamps then subtracting one day from the other thereby getting the number of seconds between the two dates, then since Timestamp value 0 = UNIX Epoch time [thats 0 days 0 months 0 years] you just use the standard gmdate (UNIX time is based from GMT) function to extract the required information... Probably made it sound more confuzzling than I needed to so I'll follow this with a php function I wrote a year or so ago.

---

function GetDays($date1,$date2)
{
$timestamp1 = strtotime($date1);
$timestamp2 = strtotime($date2);

$dif = $timestamp1 - $timestamp2;

$days = gmdate('z',$dif);

return $days;
}

---

Of course this is a rather scaled down version of that code so that it is more readable you can probably see how easy this is to expand apon.

Want to get the total number of days/weeks/months/years between two dates then just change the string 'z' to another letter or set of letters.

i.e. - Show the number of days/months/years til a certain date would be somthing like this:

$string = gmdate('Days til Christmas: j Days, n Months, Y Years',$dif);

Of course if you wanted each part placed nicely into variables or arrays you could either parse it or handle each line separatly.

$days = gmdate('j',$dif);
$months = gmdate('n',$dif);
$years = gmdate('Y',$dif);

Hope this helps 🙂

[brainiac]

gmdate(); won't do what he want.
gmdate will show a date in the past because it calculates the values as if it were a unix timestamp, wich it isn't, it is the difference in seconds between two timestamps.

Here is what you probably wanna do:

<?php
function GetDays($date1,$date2) {
$timestamp1 = strtotime($date1);
$timestamp2 = strtotime($date2);
$dif = $timestamp1 - $timestamp2;
$days = floor(($duration / (606024)));
return $days;
}
// GetDays("largest date","smallest date");
$days = GetDays("2001-03-15","2000-11-28");
echo $days;
?>

Yeah you've guessed it, I like this method, 3rd or 4th time in 2 days I use it, in more or less modified versions 😉

[[deleted]]

Sorry, my bad, change the line to

//Subtract Smaller value from larger one add 1 second for offset purposes.
$dif = $timestamp2 - $timestamp1 + 1

I normaly use something similar to your code, and I agree it is better, I was just too tired to go look it up out of my archives. Oh how I loathe being stuck at home sick.

[Anon]

Just a quick thing...:
<?php
function GetDays($date1,$date2) {
$timestamp1 = strtotime($date1);
$timestamp2 = strtotime($date2);
$dif = $timestamp1 - $timestamp2;
$days = floor(($duration / (606024)));
^
This should be $dif

return $days;
}
// GetDays("largest date","smallest date");
$days = GetDays("2001-03-15","2000-11-28");
echo $days;
?>