Comparing Times

[SF23103]

Hello,

 

I am getting the sunset and sunrise time through an API that gives the time in these variables:
 

$sunrise_hour , $sunrise_minute

$sunset_hour , $sunset_minute

 

I am putting them together to get the time of the sunset and sunrise:

$sunset_time_formatted = "$sunset_hour:$sunset_minute PM";

Now, if I need to compare the sunset and sunrise time to the current time, ex:  date("h:i A");  do I need to convert the $sunset_time_formatted to UNIX time first?

 

The argument I came up with doesn't seem to work correctly.  My guess is it needs to know how to read my sunrise and sunset formatted variables as a real time.

if ($current_time > $sunrise_time_formatted && $current_time < $sunset_time_formatted) {
	echo "sun"; 
	}
else {
	echo "moon"; }

[requinix]

You can compare

a) A date/time formatted as Y-m-d or Y-m-d H:i:s or H:i:s. Anything else probably won't work. The rules are complicated (I'll explain if you want) so stick to just those three formats.

b) Unix timestamps

c) DateTime objects

[maxxd]

Personally, I'd use DateTime objects.

 

Right now you're comparing strings which technically does work thanks to PHP's loose typing, but it can lead to hard-to-pinpoint bugs and odd behavior. Not sure what responses your API gives, but if you try to compare "INVALID_ACCESS_TOKEN:INVALID_ACCESS_TOKEN PM" to "12:53 PM", it's going to give weird results. Obviously. However, an incorrectly formatted time string in the constructor of a DateTime object will throw an error that you can handle. Plus, I just find the DateTime objects easier to work with when it comes to comparisons and any mathematical operations.

[SF23103]

Thank you both!  Based on both of your suggestions, I went with DateTime objects, and it's working great.  That's a good point about error handling.. so I'll work on that next.

 

Also, I see that PHP even has a date_sunset that returns the time of sunset (also one for sunrise) for a given day and location.  Pretty cool, maybe I'll play with that too.