Working out days elapsed

[graham23s]

Hi Guys,

in mysql i have 2 files (date files)

they are:

1)2007-08-27 13:20:03
2)August 13, 2007, 10:02 pm

they are displayed differently, is there a way i can work out the days elapsed between them like this? or do the time stamps need to be the same?

thanks for any help guys

Graham

[trib4lmaniac]

strtotime will help you out here.

$time1 = strtotime("2007-08-27 13:20:03");
$time2 = strtotime("August 13, 2007, 10:02 pm");

// Returns the elapsed time in seconds.
$elapsed = $time2 - $time1; 

This will return a negative difference because I have left the dates in the order you listed them. You can use max and min (or just abs) if you want the difference to be always positive.

Also, note that it returns the difference in seconds. You will need to divide the result by the number of seconds in one day (60 * 60 * 24 = 86400) to get the difference in days.

$elapsed = ($time2 - $time1) / 86400; 

[SilkySmooth]

Hi Graham,

You can use the DATEDIFF function to get the difference.

I am not entirely sure what formats the function will accept, but if you have problems with the second of your date formats you should be able to use the DAY(), MONTH(), YEAR() functions to convert it into the right format before passing it to the DATEDIFF() function.

HTH

[r937]

in mysql i have 2 files (date files)

mysql has tables, columns, and rows

(okay it has files too, but these are used by the mysql software only)

are you saying you have two columns in a table?

what datatype are they? DATE? DATETIME? INTEGER? VARCHAR?

[sebulbus]

If all else fails you can reconstruct the timestamp from mktime() applied to various substrings of your fields.

[graham23s]

Hi Guys,

i went back and made the fields the exact same for easiness lol

2007-08-27 15:22:18
2007-08-13 22:02:28

can the days elapsed be easier to work out now?

thanks guys

Graham

[r937]

i went back and made the fields the exact same for easiness lol

but what are their datatypes lol?

[graham23s]

oh sorry they are both now DATETIME fields.

Graham

[r937]

excellent, now you can use the mysql DATEDIFF function

[graham23s]

thanks mate i got it lol

Graham