deanlee17
asked on
Subtracting PHP dates
Hi Experts,
I needed to subtract an arrival date from a departure date to work out the number of nights a customer stayed. So I used
$Arrival_Date = strtotime($Arrival_Date);
$Departure_Date = strtotime($Departure_Date)
$NoNights = ($Departure_Date - $Arrival_Date) / 86400;
This seemed to work fine, however I now need to put those 2 variables back into the correct format to be stored in my MySql table. How can I do this? and secondly a friend said I should be using MkDate to do this kind of thing, is this true?
Many Thanks,
Dean
I needed to subtract an arrival date from a departure date to work out the number of nights a customer stayed. So I used
$Arrival_Date = strtotime($Arrival_Date);
$Departure_Date = strtotime($Departure_Date)
$NoNights = ($Departure_Date - $Arrival_Date) / 86400;
This seemed to work fine, however I now need to put those 2 variables back into the correct format to be stored in my MySql table. How can I do this? and secondly a friend said I should be using MkDate to do this kind of thing, is this true?
Many Thanks,
Dean
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ASKER
bportlock, thats superb, thanks very much for this.
I think he said the method above struggles on leap yours or something like that. So what occasions would you actualyl use mkdate over your preferred method of 'date' and 'strtotime'?
Thanks.
I think he said the method above struggles on leap yours or something like that. So what occasions would you actualyl use mkdate over your preferred method of 'date' and 'strtotime'?
Thanks.
If I need to do calculations that are very precise I use Julian Dates http://uk3.php.net/manual/en/function.gregoriantojd.php but for 99% of my programming needs the leap year will make no difference. Most people accept vague terms like "Next Month" which can be virtually anything from 1st of next to the 31st.
strtotime is frighteningly flexible - look at these examples from http://www.php.net/strtotime
echo strtotime("now"), "\n";
echo strtotime("10 September 2000"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 day"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds"), "\n";
echo strtotime("next Thursday"), "\n";
echo strtotime("last Monday"), "\n";
strtotime is frighteningly flexible - look at these examples from http://www.php.net/strtotime
echo strtotime("now"), "\n";
echo strtotime("10 September 2000"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 day"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week"), "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds"), "\n";
echo strtotime("next Thursday"), "\n";
echo strtotime("last Monday"), "\n";
Typos in the examples above corrected below
echo "<pre>\n";
echo strtotime("now") . "\n";
echo strtotime("10 September 2000") . "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 day") . "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week") . "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds") . "\n";
echo strtotime("next Thursday") . "\n";
echo strtotime("last Monday") . "\n";
echo "</pre>\n";
echo "<pre>\n";
echo strtotime("now") . "\n";
echo strtotime("10 September 2000") . "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 day") . "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week") . "\n";
echo strtotime("+1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds") . "\n";
echo strtotime("next Thursday") . "\n";
echo strtotime("last Monday") . "\n";
echo "</pre>\n";
ASKER
Thats great, thanks very much :)
http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php