PHP - Trying to calculate difference between dates get 0 as a result

Question

I am trying to calculate the difference between two dates to get difference in days, months and years but as a result I get 0 on all parameters. I am relatively new to this, for some I am making an obvious mistake, but I cannot understand what I am doing wrong. Would anyone be kind enough to clarify this? I appreciate any answers / help, thanks.

Update

After Markus Zeller's answer I modified my code as follows and it worked. I will make further changes to better suit my needs, but the code as it is works fine. It does not provide the total number of days and months, but these are displayed as age (example 1 year, 3 months and 14 days) and not as (example 1 year 15 months and 471 days). In these two examples the dates were start: 04/15/2021 - end: 07/30/2022

Only problem left

Following the examples above, the correct past days would be 15 (or 471), while I get 14 (or 470). Why is there this 1 day error ?

function difference_between_date() { 

  $data1 = new DateTime(wp_get_current_user()->user_registered); //Registered User Date

  $data2 = new DateTime(); //Current Date


  $interval = $data1->diff($data2);
  $diffInSeconds = $interval->s; //example 45
  $diffInMinutes = $interval->i; //example 15
  $diffInHours   = $interval->h; //example 6
  $diffInDays    = $interval->d; //example 20
  $diffInMonths  = $interval->m; //example 4
  $diffInYears   = $interval->y; //example 2

  echo '<div class="today_date">days' . wp_kses_post($diffInDays) . '</div>';
  echo '<div class="today_date">months' . wp_kses_post($diffInMonths) . '</div>';
  echo '<div class="today_date">years' . wp_kses_post($diffInYears) . '</div>';
  
}   add_shortcode('diff_date', 'difference_between_date');

You're passing the format string instead of a real datetime string to strtotime... most likely this will come out as 0. — Honk der Hase
– Honk der Hase, Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 12:56
Thanks for the reply, I deleted strtotime but I always keep int (0) — Snorlax
– Snorlax, Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 13:30

Markus Zeller · Accepted Answer · 2022-07-30 12:51:33Z

1

PHP has very good DateTime functions. Use them for example:

$date1 = new DateTime('2022-07-30 15:00:00');
$date2 = new DateTime('2020-01-29 14:30:00');
$diff = $date2->diff($date1);
print_r($diff);

gives you all the properties you need. In this example 2 years, 6 months, 1 day and 30 mins or 913 days in total.

DateInterval Object
(
    [y] => 2
    [m] => 6
    [d] => 1
    [h] => 0
    [i] => 30
    [s] => 0
    [f] => 0
    [weekday] => 0
    [weekday_behavior] => 0
    [first_last_day_of] => 0
    [invert] => 0
    [days] => 913
    [special_type] => 0
    [special_amount] => 0
    [have_weekday_relative] => 0
    [have_special_relative] => 0
)

answered Jul 30, 2022 at 12:51

Markus Zeller

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4 Comments

Snorlax Over a year ago

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it. Since I'm using wordpress, in date1 I have to retrieve the user's registration date, do you think it can work if instead of the date I put a variable that contains the user's registration date?

Markus Zeller Over a year ago

Sure you can use strings like 'now' or directly $date = new DateTime(wp_get_current_user()->user_registered), because wp returns in the correct format.

Snorlax Over a year ago

Thanks, it worked great. The only problem is that there is a one day error for some reason. Following the post update you can see that instead of getting 15 days, I get 14 days. I double checked the two dates several times, actually they are 471 days and not 470 as I receive. Am I doing something wrong ?

Markus Zeller Over a year ago

Maybe you need to respect different timezones.

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