compare if a date has passed

Question

So I have some events(party) and each one has a date, when the party will be, how can I check this against the current date? I need to find all events that have passed? Any ideas? I don't even know from where to start, I store the date in mysql like this: dd/mm/yy it's plain text because I user WP metabox.

Any help will be appreciated.

possible duplicate of [Shortest way to compare 2 dates in dd/mm/yyyy format](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2729680/shortest-way-to-compare-2-dates-in-dd-mm-yyyy-format) — Fraser, Feb 22 '12 at 20:30
duplicate http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2355075/php-how-to-compare-date-and-date — Fraser, Feb 22 '12 at 20:34
again - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2113940/php-compare-date — Fraser, Feb 22 '12 at 20:35

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 22 '12 at 20:34

You should store your dates using the DATETIME format and use

SELECT date FROM dates WHERE DATEDIFF(date,NOW()) <= 0;

If you insist on keeping your very bad database scheme, you could instead do the conversion on the fly

SELECT STR_TO_DATE(date,'%d/%m/%Y') AS adate WHERE DATEDIFF(adate,NOW()) <= 0

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 22 '12 at 20:31

1

Might be a good candidate for strtotime, which can convert your date to a timestamp which is easily compared against the current timestamp generated with the time() function.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php

answered Feb 22 '12 at 20:31

JustinW

271
1
6

Igor Parra · Answer 3 · 2012-02-22T20:56:57.153

// your db date format is dd/mm/yy (European). the American is mm/dd/yy 
$db_date_event = str_replace('/', '-', $db['date_event']); 
// when - or . is used in strtotime European d-m-y format is assumed    
$db_date_event = strtotime($db_date_event);

if (time() > $db_date_event)
{
    echo 'this event is in the past';
}

// To compare at day level: (each day is represented in the 0:00 hrs (day's begin)) 

if (mktime(0, 0, 0, date('n'), date('j'), date('Y')) > $db_date_event)
{
    echo 'this event is in the past';
}

Gareth · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-22T20:35:50.293

0

Convert the date into a Unix timestamp:

list($d,$m,$y)=explode("/",$datestring);
$date=mktime(0,0,0,$m,$d,$y);

then compare with today:

$today=mktime(0,0,0,date("m"),date("d"),date("Y"));

using <, == or >:

if($date<$today)
{
     echo "Date is in the past";
}

edited Feb 22 '12 at 20:35

answered Feb 22 '12 at 20:30

Gareth

5,693
3
28
37

But how I compare it? something like `unixtimestamp <= time()` that's what I don't understand... – Uffo Feb 22 '12 at 20:32
(eventtimestamp) < time() = event in the past – JustinW Feb 22 '12 at 20:33
I've added some more detail to my answer. – Gareth Feb 22 '12 at 20:37
1

It's a waste of resources to pull out every entry from your database, when you can have the DBMS do the filtering. – kba Feb 22 '12 at 20:52

compare if a date has passed

4 Answers4