Question

Is there a way I can make a query in MySQL that will give me the difference between two timestamps in seconds, or would I need to do that in PHP? And if so, how would I go about doing that?

Answer 1

You could use the TIMEDIFF() and the TIME_TO_SEC() functions as follows:

SELECT TIME_TO_SEC(TIMEDIFF('2010-08-20 12:01:00', '2010-08-20 12:00:00')) diff;
+------+
| diff |
+------+
|   60 |
+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

You could also use the UNIX_TIMESTAMP() function as @Amber suggested in an other answer:

SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2010-08-20 12:01:00') - 
       UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2010-08-20 12:00:00') diff;
+------+
| diff |
+------+
|   60 |
+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

If you are using the TIMESTAMP data type, I guess that the UNIX_TIMESTAMP() solution would be slightly faster, since TIMESTAMP values are already stored as an integer representing the number of seconds since the epoch (Source). Quoting the docs:

When UNIX_TIMESTAMP() is used on a TIMESTAMP column, the function returns the internal timestamp value directly, with no implicit “string-to-Unix-timestamp” conversion.

Keep in mind that TIMEDIFF() return data type of TIME. TIME values may range from ‘-838:59:59’ to ‘838:59:59’ (roughly 34.96 days)