find the days from file's created date

Question

I am trying to get the create date and finding the date diff but was not able to do it. I was able to use new DateTime to use date1.diff as I am getting the date from file with filemtime.

Can someone point me to right direction? Thanks.

<?php
$_filename = realpath('test.txt');
if (file_exists($_filename)) {
    $crdatefile = date("Y-m-d H:i:s",filemtime($_filename));
    $date1 = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
    $datediff = $crdatefile - $date1;
    echo '$datediff' . $datediff . '____';
    if ($datediff < 0) {$datediff = $datediff * -1;}
echo '$datediff' . $datediff . '____';

    $days = round($datediff / (60 * 60 * 24));

echo 'days' . $days . '____';
    if ($days) {
        echo 'days ' . $days . '____';
        if ($days > 1) {
        //unlink($_filename);
            echo 'file delete' . '____';
        }
    }
    echo 'file after delete' . '____';
}
?>

What **exactly** is not working with the code you are using? How is that "date diff" defined? — Nico Haase, Sep 23 '22 at 08:38
you get : Notice: A non-well-formed numeric value encountered in ... right? — Mahmut Salman, Sep 23 '22 at 08:41
you can also read [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/676824/how-to-calculate-the-difference-between-two-dates-using-php) — Mahmut Salman, Sep 23 '22 at 08:45
@NicoHaase the current problem is $datediff is always zero. when I tried to use new DateTime I couldn't convert the int value (filemtime) to correct DateTime, — Onur Topal, Sep 23 '22 at 09:00
"$datediff is always zero" - what have you tried to resolve the problem? What makes you think that you can subtract two strings? — Nico Haase, Sep 23 '22 at 09:09
@NicoHaase based on this answer https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2040560/finding-the-number-of-days-between-two-dates also from this answer i made the code https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20617100/php-converting-integer-to-date-reverse-of-strtotime. — Onur Topal, Sep 23 '22 at 09:20

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 23 '22 at 08:35

1

You can do this pretty easliy, but I'd use filectime instead, since on Windows this would give you the actual creation date, whereas on a Linux systeme, it gives you the date of the last change, which is the best you can get, since no creation dates exist on Linux.

// create a new DateTime object with the timestamp returned by the file function
// pass it as format "U" (unix timestamp)
$fileTime = DateTime::createFromFormat('U', filectime($_filename));

// now just diff from a fresh DateTime object (date = now)
$daysSinceFileTime = $filetime->diff(new Datetime())->days;

answered Sep 23 '22 at 08:35

stui

353
3
15

Note: Tools like Explorer show the date in local time. With `$fileTime = DateTime::createFromFormat('U', filectime($_filename));` however, an object is generated with UTC time zone and UTC time. This time can deviate from local time by several hours. The difference in days to `new Datetime()` is then correct again, since DateTime processes the time zones correctly when calculating. – jspit Sep 29 '22 at 06:35

find the days from file's created date

1 Answers1