Days Between Dates

[fean0r]

I am trying to create a piece of code that will take 2 dates and find out how many days the dates cover.

I need the code to work over months and years, here some examples below:

2/3/2008 to 6/3/2008 would leave 5 days
31/3/2008 to 2/04/2008 would leave 3 days
30/12/2008 to 6/01/2009 would leave 8 days

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks

[Lillefix]

<?
function date_dif($date_1, $date_2)
{
	$date_1 = explode("/",$date_1);
	$date_2 = explode("/",$date_2);

if ($date_1[2] > $date_2[2])
{
	$late = $date_1;
	$early = $date_2;
}
elseif ($date_1[2] < $date_2[2])
{
	$late = $date_2;
	$early = $date_1;
}
elseif ($date_1[2] == $date_2[2])
{
	if ($date_1[1] > $date_2[1])
	{
		$late = $date_1;
		$early = $date_2;
	}
	elseif ($date_1[1] < $date_2[1])
	{
		$late = $date_2;
		$early = $date_1;
	}
	elseif ($date_1[1] == $date_2[1])
	{
		if ($date_1[0] > $date_2[0])
		{
			$late = $date_1;
			$early = $date_2;
		}
		elseif ($date_1[0] < $date_2[0])
		{
			$late = $date_2;
			$early = $date_1;
		}
		elseif ($date_1[0] == $date_2[0])
		{
			$late = $date_2;
			$early = $date_1;
		}
	}
}
if (0 <= ($late[0] - $early[0]))
{
	$result[] = $late[0] - $early[0];
}
elseif (0 > ($late[0] - $early[0]))
{
	$result[] = ($late[0] + 30) - $early[0];
	$late[1] -= 1;
}
if (0 <= ($late[1] - $early[1]))
{
	$result[] = $late[1] - $early[1];
}
elseif (0 > ($late[1] - $early[1]))
{
	$result[] = ($late[1] + 12) - $early[1];
	$late[2] -= 1;
}
if (0 <= ($late[2] - $early[2]))
{
	$result[] = $late[2] - $early[2];
}
elseif (0 > ($late[2] - $early[2]))
{
	return false;
	exit;
}
return $result;
}

$date_1 = "2/3/2008";
$date_2 = "1/4/2008";

$difference = date_dif($date_1,$date_2);

echo "There are $difference[0] days, $difference[1] months and $difference[2] years between $date_1 and $date_2";
?>

[Horizon88]

Something like this could also work. You'll need to do checking to make sure the second date is > the first date and handle appropriately, of course, but any dates that the function strtotime() handles should be usable.

function date_diff($first, $second) {
   return (strtotime($second) - strtotime($first)) / 86400;
}

It takes the two dates, converts them to timestamps (in seconds), subtracts the first from the second to get the difference, and divides by 86400, the number of seconds in a day. Some tweaking should let you use that for what you need.

[fean0r]

Thanks guys - I will test them and get back to you.

[jazz_snob]

My suggestion would be to use pear's date package. In general terms you can have two dates, calculate the "span" between them and convert that to how many days (or seconds or whatever). I don't like the API on pear.php.net, so I always run phpdocumentor against the sources to create API documentation in a format I'm more comfortable with.

/* this may be flawed but I think its close */
$span = new Date_Span();
$span->setFromDateDiff($date1, $date2);
$days = $span->toDays();