php date help

[centenial]

Hi,

I need to store a download date in a MySQL Database when a user makes an order, and check to see if that download date has expired when the user logs in in the future. What would be the best way to do this? timestamp?

Is there a PHP function that can anaylze the timestamp (or some sort of date string) and check to see how much time is left?

Example: User orders download access for 24 hours - Comes back 5 hours, 20 minutes later - It should tell him that he has 18 hours fourty minutes left.

I just need help on the timestamp/php date/math function... I've got the database queries down.

Thanks!

[NogDog]

You could do it all within the database. On the inital request, save the current date/time in a column of the transcation table (using the NOW() MySQL function). On subsequent requests, when you validate the request ID in the database, you can also check if the current time is within some period of time since the initial request time using the DATEDIFF() or TIMEDIFF() functions (see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/date-and-time-functions.html).