Is there a way to calculate time differences in MySQL using one select

Question

I have a table containing the following:

name    type
id    : INT
date1 : DATETIME
date2 : DATETIME

And I need to calculate the difference between date2 and date1.

This is possible using the TIMEDIFF function in MySQL.

However, is there a way to get the result of TIMEDIFF(date2,date1) using one select, and not using 2 helper selects:

select TIMEDIFF( (select date2 from example_table where id=1) , (select date1 from example_table where id=1) );

Answer 1

select TIMEDIFF( date2 ,date1) from example_table where id=1;