How to compare two Carbon Timestamps?

Question

I have two timestamps, edited_at which I created and created_at (Laravel's)... In database, both have type timestamp and default value 0000-00-00 00:00:00... But

var_dump(edited_at variable) is giving string. While var_dump(created_at variable) is object/Carbon. What is wrong with these timestamps?

I have to compare both after converting into integer using format('U'). I can only call this method on Carbon Object. How can I do that?

Answer 1

First, Eloquent automatically converts it's timestamps (created_at, updated_at) into carbon objects. You could just use updated_at to get that nice feature, or specify edited_at in your model in the $dates property:

protected $dates = ['edited_at'];

---

Now back to your actual question. Carbon has a bunch of comparison functions:

• eq() equals
• ne() not equals
• gt() greater than
• gte() greater than or equals
• lt() less than
• lte() less than or equals

Usage:

if($model->edited_at->gt($model->created_at)){
    // edited at is newer than created at
}

Answer 2

First, convert the timestamp using the built-in eloquent functionality, as described in this answer.

Then you can just use Carbon's min() or max() function for comparison. For example:

$dt1 = Carbon::create(2012, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0); $dt2 = Carbon::create(2014, 1, 30, 0, 0, 0); echo $dt1->min($dt2);

This will echo the lesser of the two dates, which in this case is $dt1.

See http://carbon.nesbot.com/docs/