Question

Like the title says, PHP is really confusing me on a simple if comparison statement that’s returning the opposite of what it should be returning. I’m trying to compare 2 datetime’s that are first converted to strings:

//Fetched db query, this returns 2012-06-23 16:00:00
$databaseDateTime = strtotime($row['time']);
//This now returns 1340481600

//today's date and time I'm comparing to, this returns 2012-06-22 17:14:46 
$todaysDateTime = strtotime(date("Y-m-d H:i:s"));
//this now returns 1340399686

Great, everything works perfect so far. Now here’s where things get hairy:

if ($databaseDateTime < $todaysDateTime) { $eventType = 'past'; }

And this returns ‘past’, which of course it shouldn’t. Please tell me I’m missing something. My project kind of depends on this functionality being airtight.

**EDIT***
Thanks guys for taking the time to help me out. Let me post the entire code because a few of you need more context. The request is coming from an IOS5 to my backend code and json is being sent back to the phone.

<?php
 //all included files including $link to mysqli_db and function sendResponse()

 function getEvents($eventType, $eventArray) {
   global $link;
   global $result;
   global $i;
   global $todaysDateTime;
   foreach ($eventArray as $key => $value) {
       $sqlGetDeal = mysqli_query($link, "SELECT time FROM deals WHERE id='$value' AND  active='y' LIMIT 1") or die ("Sorry there has been an error!");

    while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($sqlGetDeal)) {

       //compare times to check if event already happened
       $databaseDateTime = strtotime($row['time']);
       if ($databaseDateTime < $todaysDateTime) { $eventType = 'past'; }

      $result[$i] = array(
        'whenDeal' => $eventType,
        'time' => $databaseDateTime,
      );
      $i++;
    }//end while

  }//end foreach
 }

 if (isset($_GET['my'])) {
   //$_GET['my'] comes in as a string of numbers separated by commas e.g. 3,2,6,3
   $myDeals = preg_replace('#[^0-9,]#', '', $_GET['my']);
   $todaysDateTime = strtotime(date("Y-m-d H:i:s"));
   $result = array();

   $kaboomMy = explode(",", $myDeals);

   $i = 1;
   if ($myEvents != "") {
     getEvents('future', $kaboomMy);
   }//end if

   sendResponse(200, json_encode($result));

 } else {
   sendResponse(400, 'Invalid request');
 } //end $_POST isset

?>

Answer 1

Found a quick hack around the issue. I just added a local variable to my function and rearranged my compare statement

//added local variable $eventTyppe to function
$eventTyppe;

changed compare from:

 if ($databaseDateTime < $todaysDateTime) { $eventType = 'past'; } 

to:

if ($todaysDateTime < $databaseDateTime ) { 
     $eventTyppe = $eventType; 
  } else { 
     $eventTyppe = 'past'; 
  }

Notice if I rearrange compare:

if ($databaseDateTime < $todaysDateTime ) { 
   $eventTyppe = 'past'; 
 } else { 
   $eventTyppe = $eventType; 
 }

I still get the same error. This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen and the first PHP bug I’ve run into (I’m assuming it’s a PHP bug).