Backward-counting day display in php

Question

I am a complete newbie in PHP. I would like to show the number of days missing for a specific date. In other words, I want to display something like:

"X days to go for the great event"

using PHP and the server time.

How is this accomplished?

Answer 1

<?php

$event_date = '2010-01-01 00:00:00';
$event_time = strtotime($event_date);
$diff = $event_time - time();
echo floor($diff/(24*60*60)).' days to go for the great event';

Note: I'm totally side stepping any timezone considerations, so, be sure you read up on timezone issues associated with using the PHP datetime functions.

Answer 2

jakemcgraw's answer would have my vote, had I 15 rep. :)

You might want to use mktime() instead of strtotime(), though.