Date Difference in php on days? [duplicate]

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• How to calculate the difference between two dates using PHP? 32 answers

Is there a quick way to calculate date difference in php? For example:

$date1 = '2009-11-12 12:09:08';
$date2 = '2009-12-01 08:20:11';

And then do a calculation, $date2 minus $date1

I read php.net documentation, but no luck. Is there a quick way to do it?

Answer 1

Below code will give the output for number of days, by taking out the difference between two dates..

$str = "Jul 02 2013";
$str = strtotime(date("M d Y ")) - (strtotime($str));
echo floor($str/3600/24);

Answer 2

strtotime will convert your date string to a unix time stamp. (seconds since the unix epoch.

$ts1 = strtotime($date1);
$ts2 = strtotime($date2);

$seconds_diff = $ts2 - $ts1;

Answer 3

I would recommend to use date->diff function, as in example below:

   $dStart = new DateTime('2012-07-26');
   $dEnd  = new DateTime('2012-08-26');
   $dDiff = $dStart->diff($dEnd);
   echo $dDiff->format('%R'); // use for point out relation: smaller/greater
   echo $dDiff->days;

see http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.diff.php