How can I compare two dates in PHP?

Question

How can I compare two dates in PHP?

The date is stored in the database in the following format

2011-10-2

If I wanted to compare today's date against the date in the database to see which one is greater, how would I do it?

I tried this,

$today = date("Y-m-d");
$expire = $row->expireDate //from db

if($today < $expireDate) { //do something; }

but it doesn't really work that way. What's another way of doing it?

Answer 1

If all your dates are posterior to the 1st of January of 1970, you could use something like:

$today = date("Y-m-d");
$expire = $row->expireDate; //from database

$today_time = strtotime($today);
$expire_time = strtotime($expire);

if ($expire_time < $today_time) { /* do Something */ }

If you are using PHP 5 >= 5.2.0, you could use the DateTime class:

$today_dt = new DateTime($today);
$expire_dt = new DateTime($expire);

if ($expire_dt < $today_dt) { /* Do something */ }

Or something along these lines.

Answer 2

in the database the date looks like this 2011-10-2

Store it in YYYY-MM-DD and then string comparison will work because '1' > '0', etc.

Answer 3

Just to compliment the already given answers, see the following example:

$today = new DateTime('');
$expireDate = new DateTime($row->expireDate); //from database



if($today->format("Y-m-d") < $expireDate->format("Y-m-d")) { 
    //do something; 
}

Update: Or simple use old-school date() function:

if(date('Y-m-d') < date('Y-m-d', strtotime($expire_date))){
    //echo not yet expired! 
}   

Answer 4

I would'nt do this with PHP. A database should know, what day is today.( use MySQL->NOW() for example ), so it will be very easy to compare within the Query and return the result, without any problems depending on the used Date-Types

SELECT IF(expireDate < NOW(),TRUE,FALSE) as isExpired FROM tableName

Answer 5

$today = date('Y-m-d');//Y-m-d H:i:s
$expireDate = new DateTime($row->expireDate);// From db 
$date1=date_create($today);
$date2=date_create($expireDate->format('Y-m-d'));
$diff=date_diff($date1,$date2);

//echo $timeDiff;
if($diff->days >= 30){
    echo "Expired.";
}else{
    echo "Not expired.";
}

Answer 6

You can convert the dates into UNIX timestamps and compare the difference between them in seconds.

$today_date=date("Y-m-d");
$entered_date=$_POST['date'];
$dateTimestamp1 = strtotime($today_date);
$dateTimestamp2 = strtotime($entered_date);
$diff= $dateTimestamp1-$dateTimestamp2;
//echo $diff;
if ($diff<=0)
   {
     echo "Enter a valid date";
   }

Answer 7

Here's a way on how to get the difference between two dates in minutes.

// set dates
$date_compare1= date("d-m-Y h:i:s a", strtotime($date1));
// date now
$date_compare2= date("d-m-Y h:i:s a", strtotime($date2));

// calculate the difference
$difference = strtotime($date_compare1) - strtotime($date_compare2);
$difference_in_minutes = $difference / 60;

echo $difference_in_minutes;

Answer 8

You can use simple PHP to compare dates:

$date = new simpleDate();
echo $date->now()->compare($expire_date)->isBeforeOrEqual();

This will give you true or false.

You can check the tutorials for more examples. Please click here .

Answer 9

I had that problem too and I solve it by:

$today = date("Ymd");
$expire = str_replace('-', '', $row->expireDate); //from db

if(($today - $expire) > $NUMBER_OF_DAYS) 
{ 
    //do something; 
}

Answer 10

Here's my spin on how to get the difference in days between two dates with PHP. Note the use of '!' in the format to discard the time part of the dates, thanks to info from DateTime createFromFormat without time .

$today = DateTime::createFromFormat('!Y-m-d', date('Y-m-d'));
$wanted = DateTime::createFromFormat('!d-m-Y', $row["WANTED_DELIVERY_DATE"]);
$diff = $today->diff($wanted);
$days = $diff->days;
if (($diff->invert) != 0) $days = -1 * $days;
$overdue = (($days < 0) ? true : false);
print "<!-- (".(($days > 0) ? '+' : '').($days).") -->\n";

Answer 11

If you want a date ($date) to get expired in some interval for example a token expiration date when performing a password reset, here's how you can do:

$date = $row->expireDate;

$date->add(new DateInterval('PT24H')); // adds 24 hours

$now = new \DateTime();

if($now < $date) { /* expired after 24 hours */ }

But in your case you could do the comparison just as the following:

$today = new DateTime('Y-m-d');

$date = $row->expireDate;

if($today < $date) { /* do something */ }

Answer 12

Found the answer on a blog and it's as simple as:

strtotime(date("Y"."-01-01")) -strtotime($newdate))/86400

And you'll get the days between the 2 dates.

Answer 13

This works because of PHP's string comparison logic. Simply you can check...

if ($startdate < $date) {// do something} 
if ($startdate > $date) {// do something}

Both dates must be in the same format. Digits need to be zero-padded to the left and ordered from most significant to least significant. Ymd and Ymd H:i:s satisfy these conditions.

Answer 14

first of all, try to give the format you want to the current date time of your server:

1. Obtain current date time

   $current_date = getdate();

2. Separate date and time to manage them as you wish:

$current_date_only = $current_date[year].'-'.$current_date[mon].'-'.$current_date[mday]; $current_time_only = $current_date['hours'].':'.$current_date['minutes'].':'.$current_date['seconds'];

3. Compare it depending if you are using donly date or datetime in your DB:

   $today = $current_date_only.' '.$current_time_only;

   or

   $today = $current_date_only;

   if($today < $expireDate)

hope it helps