Finding interval between dates & times?

[Anon]

Hello!

I wonder if anyone could help me with this problem:

I wish to find the time interval in days, hours, and minutes, between 2 date/time strings.

So for example, I have the following info:
Start Time: 18/04/01 16:00:00
End Time: 19/04/01 19:30:00

What type of MySQL variable should I use to store these variables that will allow me to work out the interval between the two? Should I use the 'datetime' variable that stores date/time as 'YYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'?

If thats the case how do I calculate the interval between the two in PHP?

I want to thank you in advance for any help you provide. Its very much appreciated!

Paul.

[toma42]

Use a datetime field in mysql and select them out of the database using unix_timestamp(datetime) then subtract the start date from the end date and you've got the # of seconds between the dates.

[jc94062]

the Unix timestamp is actually the number of seconds since sometime during 1970, just thought I'm mention that 🙂