How best to determine time differences?

[Anon]

date("Y-m-d H:i:s") returns the current local date and time, like so:

2001-05-08 17:06:08

What is the best way to determine the difference between that current local date and time and another date and time that was loaded from a database (in that same format) within PHP? Is there something quick and easy or do I have to write some long comparison function?

I already know about the DATEDIFF function in SQL/SQL Server, but I want to do the comparison outside of the database.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. 🙂

[yojimbo]

One way to do a date compare is to turn both times into the UNIX timestamp with strtotime then subtract. The difference can be divided by whatever units you want to use. 60 for minutes, 3600 for hours etc.

*If you're using windows..don't know if this would work.

Hope this helps.

[Anon]

Cya Brian.
If you need only date_diff() function you can look at the column written by Allan Kent about dates handling using php.
You can find the article here: http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/akent20000610.php3
And more precisely, the function to subtract 2 dates is at page 7.
Don't know if this can help you!
- Ciao