Question

I want to get the absolute days away a datetime is from today. For example, i would like to know if a date is 2 days away, or 78 days away, or even 5,239 days away (not likely, but you get the idea). I am using an MS SQL database which is returning datetimes where the time components are all 00:00:00.

date_diff returns relative values that you then have to do some crazy math with to get absolute dates do to calculating months, years, etc.

Also, i am having issues getting the date component only of today’s date in php.

Edit:
Thanks to mr. w. This is what i ended up with:

    $date = $row['AirdateDateTime'];
    $today = date_create(date("Y-m-d"));
    $away = date_diff($today, $date);
    $d = $away->format("%R%a");

The date_create() part was the part i was originally missing to convert to an actual datetime. Also, the format needs to be %R%a. Using %R%d only works for dates in this month.

Answer 1

The date_diff() function (really, the DateTime::diff() method) is what you want, and it’s actually not hard. In fact, I think the example in the docs is exactly what you’re after:

<?php
    $datetime1 = new DateTime('2009-10-11');
    $datetime2 = new DateTime('2009-10-13');
    $interval = $datetime1->diff($datetime2);
    echo $interval->format('%R%d days');
?>

or

<?php
    $datetime1 = date_create('2009-10-11');
    $datetime2 = date_create('2009-10-13');
    $interval = date_diff($datetime1, $datetime2);
    echo $interval->format('%R%d days');
?>

What’s returned is a DateInterval object, which you can format any way you want with its format() method. Above, it’s being formatted to days, but you have a ton of options; see http://us.php.net/manual/en/dateinterval.format.php.

You shouldn’t need to do any math yourself.

[EDIT – forgot this part]

As for getting the date component of today’s date, you can do something like this:

<?php
    echo date('Y-m-d');
?>

See http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php.