Question

I need to compare two dates to show an edit link if it is within 5 mins after the post was made, in PHP. If more than 5 minutes have passed, don’t show anything.

$answer_post_date = get_the_time("Y-m-d");

$current_date = date("Y-m-d");

$formated_current_date = strtotime($answer_post_date);
$formated_answer_post_date = strtotime($current_date);

At this point I have two values:

1274414400 ($formated_current_date)
1276056000 ($formated_answer_post_date)

I am not sure what to do next to check if the current date/time is > 5 mins from the answer post date.

Any suggestions would be great.

All I really need the answer to be is a Boolean (yes/no) and if yes, display the minuets left to show the link to edit.

Answer 1

You’re only handling dates, how are you supposed to know if the difference is 5 minutes?

Anyway, I’d say the majority of the PHP code that uses the default PHP functions is at least somewhat broken. The problem is you, despite a unix timestamp storing the correct point in time something happens, it does not store timezone information. See here.

So, forget using only date and strtotime. Use the datetime extension.

Store in the database the Unix timestamp and the timezone (by timezone I mean e.g. Europe/Lisbon). Then:

$tz = new DateTimeZone($timezone);
$answer_post_date = new DateTime("$timestamp");
$answer_post_date->setTimeZone($tz);
$current_date = new DateTime("now", $tz);

$diff = $current_date->diff($answer_post_date);
if ($diff->format("a") > 0 ||
        $diff->format("h") > 0 ||
        $diff->format("m") >= 5) {
    //more than 5 minutes have passed
}

Of course, for comparing dates, you can always compare the timestamps.