Comparing Time in IF statement PHP

Question

i am developing a module in php where i am supposed to manage time differences and proceed at a specific time difference. i am fetching a value from database ($end_date) which contains time.

$end_date = $result['end_date'];

getting the server time from

$date = $this->GetServerTime();

getting the time difference between these two

$diffrence = date("Y-m-d H:i:s",strtotime("$date -  $end_date"));

now, i need to check IF the time difference is less than 15 seconds via if statement. my approach:

$to_time = strtotime("0000-00-00 00:00:15");
            if ($difference < $to_time)
            {
             echo "here";

            }

but i believe i am not doing something right, how else should i compare this? i've done a lot of research but to no avail, any help is appreciated.

Well, first off your `$difference` variable is a string looking something like `2015-10-01` while your `$to_time` variable looks like this `144112331` So comparing them like that isn't gonna work. — Epodax, Oct 01 '15 at 07:15
Epodax is right. That won't work at all. What about this: As i understand `strtotime` returns timestamps in seconds. Wouldn't simply converting the server date ($date) and the fetched date ($end_date) both to timestamps and then just subtracting them give you the seconds difference? — Juan Carlos Ospina Gonzalez, Oct 01 '15 at 07:20

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

One way to do this could be using something like this

$to_time = strtotime("2008-12-13 10:42:00");
$from_time = strtotime("2008-12-13 10:21:00");
$difference = $to_time - $from_time;

if($difference > 15){
   <CODE>
}

And for those who use a different date / time format than above, can use something like the below code, you can use the date() function's parameters to specify your date format.

$dateFormat = "d/m/Y H:i:s";
$tmp_to_time = date_create_from_format($dateFormat,"25/08/2015 10:45:12");
$tmp_from_time = date_create_from_format($dateFormat,"25/08/2015 10:34:15");

$to_time = strtotime(date_format($tmp_to_time , $dateFormat))
$from_time = strtotime(date_format($tmp_from_time , $dateFormat))
$difference = $to_time - $from_time;

if($difference > 15){
   <CODE>
}

Inspiration and main part of code found from here

fboes · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-01T07:32:25.840

Whenever I have to do something similar, I just calculate with timestamps (which are in seconds).

$end_date = strtotime($result['end_date']);    # timestamp in s
$date     = strtotime($this->GetServerTime()); # timestamp in s

if ($date - $enddate > 15) {
    echo "Here";
}

For minutes and hours you can multiply these times easily with 60.

if ($date - $enddate > (15*60)) { # 15 minutes
    echo "Here";
}

I am not entirely sure this will work with daylight saving time, but it should suffice for most use cases.

Oh, btw: This is really helpful if you have to compare with the current time, as time() returns a timestamp in seconds.

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 01 '15 at 12:12

0

This is how it could be done :

$end_date = strtotime($result['end_date']);
$date     = strtotime($this->GetServerTime());
$difference = $date-$end_date;
$sec = strtotime(15);
if ($difference < $sec){
  echo "here";
 }

edited Oct 01 '15 at 12:12

Obmerk Kronen

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answered Oct 01 '15 at 11:34

Shahsays

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Comparing Time in IF statement PHP

3 Answers3