What's the oldest and newest dates representable by PHP datetime?

Question

Let's assume a 64 bit version of PHP in case that matters

I'm thinking about generating a random datetime but I realised I don't know how far back in time or how far forward in time the min-max possible values for datetime are to use as min-max for random

I don't think PHP's DateTime class has min/max values other than the hardware boundaries. However even on 32bit machines the dates are crazy big/small. The important thing is that it can easily work with dates much smaller than UNIX epoch. https://ideone.com/FGGoa3 — Dharman, Mar 15 '19 at 21:31

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 15 '19 at 20:59

0

<?php

$min = \date_create('@' . PHP_INT_MIN);
var_dump($min->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'));

$max = \date_create('@' . PHP_INT_MAX);
var_dump($max->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'));

$diff = \date_diff($min, $max);

echo $diff->format("%R%a days");

https://3v4l.org/8N17M

This is the earliest and furthest datetime I've found so far

Not sure why I'm getting 0 days in the diff though

answered Mar 15 '19 at 20:59

arcanine

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The difference between PHP_INT_MAX and PHP_INT_MIN is greater than PHP_INT_MAX. That may be why you're getting 0 days – Don't Panic Mar 15 '19 at 22:04

What's the oldest and newest dates representable by PHP datetime?

1 Answers1