Comparing Dates

[LostSole]

Hi Guys!

 

Im having a little trouble comparing two dates as I've never worked with dates before. One is the current date and the other is stored in a database with field-type timestamp. I was hoping someone could teach me how to:

Compare the date in the database with todays date and if the date is less than 1 month away, tell the user they need to update their subscription, otherwise show the number of days left for their subscription.

 

//Get the date from the Database in the format DD-MM-YYYY
$queryExpiresOn = "SELECT DATE_FORMAT(AcctExpiresOn, '%d-%m-%Y') AS new_date FROM account WHERE AcctID = ".$acctID."";
$resultExpiresOn = mysql_query($queryExpiresOn) or die(mysql_error());

$expiryDate = date(mysql_result($resultExpiresOn,0,"new_date"));
$todaysDate = date("d-m-Y");

if ($expiryDate < $todaysDate) {                      // here I dont know how to add/subtract 11 months to $expiryDate
echo "Your subscription still has ___ days left";     // here i dont know how to work out how many days are left
}

else {
echo "Please increase your subscription";     
}

 

Thanks alot for your help!

 

 

 

[Perad]

I believe you need to use the strtotime function. This will create timestamp which can then be used to compare the dates with.

 

http://uk3.php.net/strtotime

 

 

[RMcLeod]

I think the easiest way to do this is to get the timestamp out of the database as is, this makes doing maths on it easier.

 

Assuming you have a variable called $expiry which contains the timestamp pulled from the database try this.

 

$today = strtotime(date('d-m-Y')); //Gets the timestamp for today

 

if($expiry < $today) { // Check if expiry date is in the past

  echo 'Your subscription has expired';

} else {

  $daysleft = ($expiry - $today) / 86400; //timestamps are in seconds, there are 86400 seconds in a day

  if($daysleft < 31) {

    echo 'Please update your subscription';

  } else {

    echo 'You have ' . $daysleft . ' days left for your subscription';

  }

}

[LostSole]

thank-you very much guys, you have both helped greatly!