Question

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Calculate number of days between two given dates

Is there a way to calculate the number of days between the current date and a specific month?

For example if the current date is March 25th 2011 and I want PHP to calculate the days between now and September 5th 2010.

Is there a function available for this?

EDIT

Also, I would like the year to be dynamic (so I don’t have to define it) – so if the present date is September 20th 2010 it knows to count the same year – whilst if it’s January 7th 2009 it knows that it needs to calculate the number of days between Jan 7th 2009 and September 5th 2008.

Answer 1

Your edit makes the question more interesting: how to find days since the nearest past September 5th. Here is one of many approaches:

$input=$argv[1];    //"now" for now.

$base=strtotime($input);

$t=strtotime("September 5");    //Defaults to current year

while(true){
    echo "t=".date("Y-m-d",$t)."\n";
    $diff=$base-$t;
    if($diff>=0)break;
    //If diff is -ve, $t is still in future, so go back one year
    $t=strtotime("-1 year",$t);
    }

echo "Sep 5th is ".floor($diff/86400)." days before $input.\n";

It is a commandline script, so you can test it like this:php test.php now gives “Sep 5th is 98 days before now.” while php test.php 2000-01-01 gives “Sep 5th is 118 days before 2000-01-01.”
It does not support future dates though: php test.php 2020-12-31 gives “Sep 5th is 3405 days before 2020-12-31.”