PHP date greater than todays date not working

Question

I have looked all over and I can't work out why this isn't working. I am trying to compare today's date to a date I set. I want to know if the date is greater than or equal to todays date. For some reason my code isn't working and I can't figure out why. This is the code I have:

    <?php 
 $date_now = date("d-m-Y");      
             
if (($date_now >= date("01-12-2020"))) { ?>

            greater than 1st

   <?php  } else { ?>

            not greater than

   <?php  } ?>

I am sure it is something simple but I have looked all over and I can't work out what I am missing.

Answer 1

You could try like this with \\strtotime() native php function :

<?php
$date_now = date("d-m-Y");

// now compare date as timestamp
// 1606780800 (1st december 2020) is greater than 1606176000 (24th november 2020)
if (\strtotime($date_now) >= \strtotime(date("01-12-2020"))) {

    echo 'greater than 1st';

 }  else {

    echo 'not greater than';
  }

\\strtotime give you the ability to retrieve timestamp from an date (as text or locale notation).