Getting the time interval

Question

I have two timestamp input one is the current time and another one is future

i.e.

Future time: 2010-8-17 23:00 Present time: 2010-8-15 11:00

I want to setup notification system which will display the time intervals between the above dates. i.e.

15 minutes before 30 minutes before 1 hour before 2 hour before 3 hour before .... .... .... 1 day before

I am not sure how to achieve this task in php, wondering if any one here can suggest me how to achieve this task

Answer 1

$t1 = getdate($current_date);
$t2 = getdate($future_date);
return $t2[0]-$t1[0];

This will give you the difference between the two dates, measured in seconds.

Answer 2

Get the difference between the two dates and then use date_parse

// $difference = difference in times
print_r(date_parse($difference));

That will result in something along the lines of

Array ( [year] => 2006 [month] => 12 [day] => 12 [hour] => 10 [minute] => 0 [second] => 0 [fraction] => 0.5 [warning_count] => 0 [warnings] => Array() [error_count] => 0 [errors] => Array() [is_localtime] => )

See http://php.net/manual/en/function.date-parse.php for more info

Answer 3

How about using the DateTime class.

<?php
$datetime1 = new DateTime('2010-8-15 11:00');
$datetime2 = new DateTime('2010-8-17 23:00');
$interval = $datetime1->diff($datetime2);
echo $interval->format('%R%d days, %H hours');
?>

Output:

+2 days, 12 hours