Question

I am trying to compare today and a given date in PHP, and I am getting some unexpected results.

Here is some output I have:

echo time(); // 1315940430 
echo strtotime("+20 days", $date_string); // 1730010
echo $date_string; // 2010-9-30 

and when I try something like this:

if (date() > date('Y-m-d', strtotime("+20 days", $date_string))) 
{

}

And the check always returns true no matter what the $date_string is. Any idea how to fix this?

Answer 1

if (date('Y-m-d') > date('Y-m-d', strtotime("+20 days", $date_string))) 
{

}

---

Update:

The reason is because the 2nd part of your if statement is in 1970!

That’s why it always returns true.

See demo: http://codepad.org/tmmuoSXv

Code:

<?php
$date_string = '2010-05-02';
$date_now = date('Y-m-d');
$converted = date('Y-m-d', strtotime("+20 days", $date_string));

echo $date_now.PHP_EOL.$converted.PHP_EOL;

if ($date_now > $converted) 
{
   echo 'hello'.PHP_EOL;
}

echo 'there'.PHP_EOL;
?>

Output:

2011-09-13
1970-01-21
hello
there

---

SOLVED:

What you to do is this:

$converted = date('Y-m-d', strtotime("+20 days", strtotime($date_string)));

The extra strtotime fixes it all up for you and you get the correct date 🙂

Demo: http://codepad.org/Fhnx5er0
Demo(if is false): http://codepad.org/jsnEMUGI