Prevent inserting 0 year into db - time difference

Question

I read an article about time difference in stackoverflow URL

$datetime1 = new DateTime("2010-06-20");

$datetime2 = new DateTime("2011-06-22");

$difference = $datetime1->diff($datetime2);

echo 'Difference: '.$difference->y.' years, ' 
                   .$difference->m.' months, ' 
                   .$difference->d.' days';

print_r($difference);

This is a code to calculate time difference as you know , and i need a time diff to insert into db , but if the time diff is less than 0 years it inserts the 0 year too , how can i prevent this?

so, you have such values `0 years, 0 months, 2 days` in that column? — RomanPerekhrest, Jun 26 '16 at 16:26
yes but i dont want to insert zeros if years and months are 0 i want to insert just days. — Mark Giese, Jun 26 '16 at 17:04
also, there could be cases with such value `0 years, 1 months, 0 days`. Should it be `1 months` in the end? — RomanPerekhrest, Jun 26 '16 at 17:16

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 26 '16 at 19:11

Just loop over the y, m, d values with foreach, adding them if they total more than 0 in each case?

$datetime1 = new DateTime("2010-06-20");
$datetime2 = new DateTime("2011-06-22");

$difference = $datetime1->diff($datetime2);

$description = [];
foreach (["year", "month", "day"] as $unit) {
    $value = $difference->{substr($unit, 0, 1)};
    switch ($value) {
        case 0: break;
        case 1: $description[] = "1 $unit"; break;
        default: $description[] = "$value {$unit}s"; break;
    }
}
echo "Difference: " . implode(", ", $description);

Prevent inserting 0 year into db - time difference

1 Answers1