Counting with dates

palpie

Needing help with some date counting.

I've experimented a bit with this and have something which works. But the code is pretty long, with alot of "if", and I'd rather have a shorter one.

It should compare two dates and give the amount of days, months and years between.

Example:
Todays date - 2001-03-27
Given date - 2000-08-10
Result - 0 years, 7 months, 17 days

Which functions would be the best to use?

rosborne

Here is an extract from a book I have to hand (no I'm not the author). Its "PHP Developers Cookbook" published by SAMS, in case your interested...

I've not tested the code, but here goes.

<?php
$date1 = "03/03/2001";
$date2 = "10/08/2000";

list ($month1, $day1, $year1) = explode ("/", $date1);
list ($month2, $day2, $year2) = explode ("/", $date2);

$timestamp1 = mktime (0,0,0,$month1,$day1,$year1);
$timestamp2 = mktime (0,0,0,$month2,$day2,$year2);

$diff = ($timestamp1 > $timestamp2) ? ($timestamp1 - $timestamp2) : ($timestamp2 - $timestamp1);

print "The difference is\n";
print date ("Y", $diff) - 1970;
print "years, ". (date ("m", $diff) -1);
print "month and ". (date ("d",$diff) -1);
print "days.";
?>

Note to the site admin for this place, please make the message submission box a bit wider, as entering code is a bit of a nightmare :-)

Cheers,

Richard

palpie

Hmmm. I've tested it now and it doesn't work. Not the way I want, that is. It says the difference between 08/10/2000 and 04/01/2001 is 0 years, 5 months and 24 days.

rosborne

But that is what you asked for ????

palpie

Wll, I was more looking for the real difference between the dates. Between 08/10/2000 and 04/01/2001 there isn't 5 months and 24 days in any "direction".

rosborne

Peter,

The bit at the top of the code I posted above is...

<?php
$date1 = "03/03/2001";
$date2 = "10/08/2000";
.....

A silly question, but you did change these dates to the dates you wanted to know the difference between didn't you?

Its just the difference between these dates is 5 months and 24 days, which is what you say the total you are getting is...

Richard

palpie

Yes, I've changed it. With todays date it says 5 months and 27 days, when it should be 7 months and 25 days.

Anon

The function counts with every month to be 31 days when it prints it out but it counts whith the correct value (30 days in jan, 28 days i feb...) wich means that between jan 31 and mars 1 it's 30 days, and between jan 1 and feb 1 there's 1 month (31 days)

Peter, do I need to say that these dates are in US-standard (month/day/year)?
A minor modification and the Swedish one should be (I've tested it and it seems to be fully functional):

$date1 = "2001-12-10";
$date2 = "2001-12-01";

list ($year1, $month1, $day1) = explode ("-", $date1);
list ($year2, $month2, $day2) = explode ("-", $date2);

$timestamp1 = mktime (0,0,0,$month1,$day1,$year1);
$timestamp2 = mktime (0,0,0,$month2,$day2,$year2);

$diff = ($timestamp1 > $timestamp2) ? ($timestamp1 - $timestamp2) : ($timestamp2 - $timestamp1);

print "The difference is\n";
print date ("Y", $diff) - 1970;
print "years, ". (date ("m", $diff) -1);
print "month and ". (date ("d",$diff) -1);
print "days.";

Good luck!

Anon

What can I say? Thanks! 🙂