PHP: Check if DateTime isn't expired

Question

I have a DateTime Object which holds an past timestamp.

I would now like to check if this DateTime is older than for example 48Hours.

How can I compore them best?

Regards

EDIT: Hi,

thanks for the help. Heres the helper method. Any naming suggesstions?

    protected function checkTemporalValidity(UserInterface $user, $hours)
{
    $confirmationRequestedAt = $user->getConfirmationTokenRequestedAt();
    $confirmationExpiredAt = new \DateTime('-48hours');

    $timeDifference = $confirmationRequestedAt->diff($confirmationExpiredAt);

    if ($timeDifference->hours >  $hours) {
        return false;
    }

    return true;
}

It formats slightly differently than `date()`, look up on the [DateInterval::format()](http://www.php.net/manual/en/dateinterval.format.php). But beware there's no such member variable as `hours` in `DateInterval`. Please look into the documentation :) — dan-lee, Apr 17 '12 at 20:06

dan-lee · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-17T19:21:32.007

6

$a = new DateTime();
$b = new DateTime('-3days');

$diff = $a->diff($b);

if ($diff->days >= 2) {
  echo 'At least 2 days old';
}

I used $a and $b for 'testing' purposes. DateTime::diff returns a DateInterval object, which has a member variable days that returns the actual day difference.

edited Apr 17 '12 at 19:21

answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:16

dan-lee

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better use (float)$diff->format('%R%a'); instead of $diff->days – Jeffrey Nicholson Carré Oct 09 '14 at 20:56

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

3

You might want to look here: How do I compare two DateTime objects in PHP 5.2.8?

The easiest solution therefore would probably be to just create another DateTime object that has a date of NOW -48Hours and then compare to that.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

Community

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answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:13

bardiir

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martinstoeckli · Answer 3 · 2013-06-18T09:16:20.903

I know this answer is a bit late, but maybe it helps somebody else:

/**
 * Checks if the elapsed time between $startDate and now, is bigger
 * than a given period. This is useful to check an expiry-date.
 * @param DateTime $startDate The moment the time measurement begins.
 * @param DateInterval $validFor The period, the action/token may be used.
 * @return bool Returns true if the action/token expired, otherwise false.
 */
function isExpired(DateTime $startDate, DateInterval $validFor)
{
  $now = new DateTime();

  $expiryDate = clone $startDate;
  $expiryDate->add($validFor);

  return $now > $expiryDate;
}

$startDate = new DateTime('2013-06-16 12:36:34');
$validFor = new DateInterval('P2D'); // valid for 2 days (48h)
$isExpired = isExpired($startDate, $validFor);

This way you can also test for other periods than whole days, and it works on Windows servers with older PHP versions too (there was a bug with DateInterval->days returning always 6015).

Wilt · Answer 4 · 2015-03-27T14:41:18.563

For people who don't want to work with days...

You can get a unix timestamp with the DateTime::getTimestamp() method. A unix timestamp is in seconds, which is easy to handle. So you can do:

$now = new DateTime();
$nowInSeconds = $now->getTimestamp();

$confirmationRequestedAtInSeconds = $confirmationRequestedAt->getTimestamp();

$expired = $now > $confirmationRequestedAtInSeconds + 48 * 60 * 60;

$expired will be true if the time is expired

PHP: Check if DateTime isn't expired

4 Answers4