PHP How to compare date and date?

Question

I have this value from database:

'2009-1-1 00:00:00', okay, let me paste my code:

$fetch = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
$db_value = $fetch['date'];//'2009-1-1 00:00:00'

$today = date('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // Todays date

If I want to compare the two values, what should I do:

if($db_value < $today){
    // Do something
}

or method 2, convert to strtotime:

if(strtotime($db_value) < strtotime($today)){
    // Do someting
}

Maybe my method is not correct, what should I use to compare 2 dates?

Answer 1

You should use the second one, because your db result is a string so it can't be used like that.

Answer 2

Probably , you can get the epoch value of the date using mktime function , then you could

compare the date's times stamp values easily . before that you parse first date string

into year, month , day , hours, minutes , seconds. then use mktime function