Timestamp use

[simpli]

Hi, I have been trying to get the difference in days (or week/month/year) between two dates but I haven't been able to make it work so I'm considering doing it with timestamps. This brings a question to me. If I use a timestamp, am I still going to have to worry about DST (daylight saving times)  and leap years? If so anyone can tell me how I should deal with them.

Any help is wanted I am really stuck and dont know what to do / where to turn to get a coherent way to calculate those differences.

Thanks in advance,

JR

[TeddyKiller]

$days = (strtotime($date1) - strtotime($date2)) / (60 * 60 * 24);
echo $days;

[simpli]

I understand how to calculate the days but my question was more what happens with DST and leap years. Because obviously if there was a leap year between the two dates i used to calculate the timestamp difference, it's 366 days that's gonna give me a year not 365.

[TeddyKiller]

I assume php knows about that already. Why, have you seen a problem related to leapyears? The code I given converts to timestamp. Timestamp is the number of seconds since 1/1/1970. As its the number of seconds (and infact correct) it should know if it was a leap year or not and add/deduct a day?

[simpli]

Hi Teddy,

I dont think it does. The timestamp returns the number of seconds and that is good and does not change whether it's a leap year or not. The problem is if I want to calculate years I have to count 366*24*60*60 and leap years and 365*24*60*60 in non leap years.

JR

[TeddyKiller]

Ah.. I understand. What you perhaps may need is a method to get the number of days in current year.

[dotMoe]

Ah.. I understand. What you perhaps may need is a method to get the number of days in current year.

 

<?
$days = (date("L") == 1) ? 366 : 365;
?>