[Resolved] Time duration between two dates

[ExpendableDecoy]

Hi. 🙂

I'm currently need to find out how I can achieve what the title says.

Basically, I have an item that is created by a user. This creation date should then be stored and, later on when viewed by other users, should be compared to the current date and then show how long it has been created for in days.

Any clue's on how to achieve this?.

Many thanks. 🙂

[bubblenut]

Unix timestamps?
When the item is created use [man]time()[/man] to get the current unix timestamp and then when you pull the info out of the database you can calculate the number of days since it was created like this.

//This is the time value we've just pulled out of the
//database, ie the creation time
$time;

//Get the number of seconds since the item was created
//by subtracting the creation timestamp from
//the current timestamp
$diff=time()-$time;

//Calculate the number of days passed out of the 
//number of seconds. 
//Number of seconds divided by 60 gives you the number of minutes
//Number of minutes divided by 60 gives you the number of hours
//Number of hours divided by 24 gives you the number of days
$days=(($diff/60)/60)/24;
//This ca be re-written as
$days=$diff/(60*60*24);
//or
$days=$diff/86400; //a usefull number to remember that :)

HTH
Bubble

[ExpendableDecoy]

Thanks bubblenut. 🙂

One more question: how would I then format this to show:

xx years xx months xx days

I presume the 'mktime()' function would be used but I cannot work it out from the php site. :bemused:

[ExpendableDecoy]

Anyone have any clue on how to output this into the year/month/day format?.

[bubblenut]

[man]date()[/man]

[ExpendableDecoy]

Cheers.