PHP Date comparasion

[_tina_]

Hi,

 

I have a MySql date in a variable.  I need to test if it is three days after that date.  Do you know how to do this?

 

Maybe something like:

if ( $date == date('Y-m-d', strtotime("+3 days")) ) ..

 

but I can't seem to get it just right.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Raphael diSanto]

You could ask MySQL to do that for you, I think (I forget how, off the top of my head, but MySQL has some nifty date functions) ..

 

Or, you'd have to do a straight-up text match on it, which would mean you'd have to make sure the date in $date looked exactly like you needed it to look.

 

I forget what MySQL dates look like now, (I usually store dates as unix timestamps, since it's easier to manipulate those - checking for +3 days is as simple as checking for $date+(3 days worth of seconds, whatever that is))

 

But what you're doing is producing a date from PHP that will look like this: "2009-09-14" (for example) .. PHP will then try a pure text match against whatever the date from MySQL is. If the date from MySQL looks like this: "09/14/2009: 12:34", it won't match, even though technically it's the same day.

 

[_tina_]

Thanks for the reply.  Yes, my date will look like - 2009-09-21 00:00:00 -

 

You could ask MySQL to do that for you, I think (I forget how, off the top of my head, but MySQL has some nifty date functions) ..

 

Or, you'd have to do a straight-up text match on it, which would mean you'd have to make sure the date in $date looked exactly like you needed it to look.

 

I forget what MySQL dates look like now, (I usually store dates as unix timestamps, since it's easier to manipulate those - checking for +3 days is as simple as checking for $date+(3 days worth of seconds, whatever that is))

 

But what you're doing is producing a date from PHP that will look like this: "2009-09-14" (for example) .. PHP will then try a pure text match against whatever the date from MySQL is. If the date from MySQL looks like this: "09/14/2009: 12:34", it won't match, even though technically it's the same day.

[Raphael diSanto]

If that's what the mysql date looks like (i.e. the value of $date in your code), then you need to make sure the php one will come out at the same format, so you'll need something like:

 

date("Y-m-d 00:00:00");

 

Because string-wise:

 

"2009-09-21 00:00:0" does not equal "2009-09-21" (which is what your original date format would have produced.

 

Uh.. Make sense?

[thebadbad]

If you wanna check if today is three days after the date stored in $date, you have to subtract three days instead of adding them:

 

if ($date == date('Y-m-d 00:00:00', strtotime('-3 days')))

Will only work if the time in $date is always 00:00:00. If not, you can use

 

list($date) = explode(' ', $date);
if ($date == date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-3 days')))

[_tina_]

Great, this is just what I need.

 

Thanks for the help with this.

 

If you wanna check if today is three days after the date stored in $date, you have to subtract three days instead of adding them:

 

if ($date == date('Y-m-d 00:00:00', strtotime('-3 days')))

Will only work if the time in $date is always 00:00:00. If not, you can use

 

list($date) = explode(' ', $date);
if ($date == date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-3 days')))