[php] How to count days between two dates in PHP?

If I have a couple of strings $startDate and $endDate which are set to (for instance) "2011/07/01" and "2011/07/17" (meaning 1 July 2011 and 17 July 2011). How would I count the days from start date to end date? In the example given, it would be 17 days.

None of the solutions worked for me. For those who are still on PHP 5.2 (DateTime::diff was introduced in 5.3), this solution works:

function howDays($from, $to) {
    $first_date = strtotime($from);
    $second_date = strtotime($to);
    $offset = $second_date-$first_date; 
    return floor($offset/60/60/24);
}

$date1 = date_create("2017-04-15");
$date2 = date_create("2017-05-18");

//difference between two dates
$diff = date_diff($date1,$date2);

//count days
echo 'Days Count - '.$diff->format("%a");

In case your DateTime has also hour:minutes:seconds and you still want to have the number of days..

   /**
     * Returns the total number of days between to DateTimes, 
     * if it is within the same year
     * @param $start
     * @param $end
     */
    public function dateTimesToDays($start,$end){
       return intval($end->format('z')) - intval($start->format('z')) + 1;
    }

https://github.com/dukeatcoding/timespan-converter

You can use date_diff to calculate the difference between two dates:

$date1 = date_create("2013-03-15");
$date2 = date_create("2013-12-12");
$diff =  date_diff($date1 , $date2);
echo  $diff->format("%R%a days");

i created a function in which if you pass two dates than it will return day wise value. For better understanding please see the output of start date : 2018-11-12 11:41:19 and End Date 2018-11-16 12:07:26

private function getTimeData($str1,$str2){
$datetime1 = strtotime($str1);
$datetime2 = strtotime($str2);
$myArray = array();
if(date('d', $datetime2) != date('d', $datetime1) ||  date('m', $datetime2) != date('m', $datetime1) || date('y', $datetime2) != date('y', $datetime1)){
    $exStr1 = explode(' ',$str1);
    $exStr2 = explode(' ',$str2);
    $datediff = strtotime($exStr2[0]) - strtotime($exStr1[0]);
    $totalDays = round($datediff / (60 * 60 * 24));
    $actualDate1 = $datetime1;
    $actualDate2 = date('Y-m-d', $datetime1)." 23:59:59";
    $interval  = abs(strtotime($actualDate2)-$actualDate1);
    $minutes   = round($interval / 60);
    $myArray[0]['startDate'] = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $actualDate1); 
    $myArray[0]['endDate'] = $actualDate2;
    $myArray[0]['minutes'] = $minutes;
    $i = 1;
    if($totalDays > 1){    
        for($i=1; $i<$totalDays; $i++){
            $dayString = "+".$i." day";
            $edate = strtotime($dayString, $actualDate1);
            $myArray[$i]['startDate'] = date('Y-m-d', $edate)." 00:00:00"; 
            $myArray[$i]['endDate'] = date('Y-m-d', $edate)." 23:59:59"; 
            $myArray[$i]['minutes'] = 1440;
        }
    }
    $actualSecDate1 = date('Y-m-d', $datetime2)." 00:00:00";
    $actualSecDate2 = $datetime2;
    $interval  = abs(strtotime($actualSecDate1)-$actualSecDate2);
    $minutes   = round($interval / 60);
    $myArray[$i]['startDate'] = $actualSecDate1; 
    $myArray[$i]['endDate'] = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $actualSecDate2); 
    $myArray[$i]['minutes'] = $minutes;
}
else{
    $interval  = abs($datetime2-$datetime1);
    $minutes   = round($interval / 60);
    $myArray[0]['startDate'] = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $datetime1); 
    $myArray[0]['endDate'] = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $datetime2);
    $myArray[0]['minutes'] = $minutes;
}

return $myArray;
}

Output

Array
(
[0] => Array
    (
        [startDate] => 2018-11-12 11:41:19
        [endDate] => 2018-11-12 23:59:59
        [minutes] => 739
    )

[1] => Array
    (
        [startDate] => 2018-11-13 00:00:00
        [endDate] => 2018-11-13 23:59:59
        [minutes] => 1440
    )

[2] => Array
    (
        [startDate] => 2018-11-14 00:00:00
        [endDate] => 2018-11-14 23:59:59
        [minutes] => 1440
    )

[3] => Array
    (
        [startDate] => 2018-11-15 00:00:00
        [endDate] => 2018-11-15 23:59:59
        [minutes] => 1440
    )

[4] => Array
    (
        [startDate] => 2018-11-16 00:00:00
        [endDate] => 2018-11-16 12:07:26
        [minutes] => 727
    )
)

If you want to know the number of days (if any), the number of hours (if any), minutues (if any) and seconds, you can do the following:

$previousTimeStamp = strtotime("2011/07/01 21:12:34");
$lastTimeStamp = strtotime("2013/09/17 12:34:11");

$menos=$lastTimeStamp-$previousTimeStamp;

$mins=$menos/60;
if($mins<1){
$showing= $menos . " seconds ago";
}
else{
$minsfinal=floor($mins);
$secondsfinal=$menos-($minsfinal*60);
$hours=$minsfinal/60;
if($hours<1){
$showing= $minsfinal . " minutes and " . $secondsfinal. " seconds ago";

}
else{
$hoursfinal=floor($hours);
$minssuperfinal=$minsfinal-($hoursfinal*60);
$days=$hoursfinal/24;
if($days<1){
$showing= $hoursfinal . "hours, " . $minssuperfinal . " minutes and " . $secondsfinal. " seconds ago";

}
else{
$daysfinal=floor($days);
$hourssuperfinal=$hoursfinal-($daysfinal*24);
$showing= $daysfinal. "days, " .$hourssuperfinal . " hours, " . $minssuperfinal . " minutes and " . $secondsfinal. " seconds ago";
}}}

echo $showing;

You could use the same logic if you want to add months and years.

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

Source: http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.diff.php

PHP has a date_diff() function to do this.

Use DateTime::diff (aka date_diff):

$datetime1 = new DateTime('2009-10-11');
$datetime2 = new DateTime('2009-10-13');
$interval = $datetime1->diff($datetime2);

Or:

$datetime1 = date_create('2009-10-11');
$datetime2 = date_create('2009-10-13');
$interval = date_diff($datetime1, $datetime2);

You can then get the interval as a integer by calling $interval->days.

Simple way to count is,

$currentdate = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$after1yrdate =  date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime("+1 year", strtotime($data)));

$diff = (strtotime($after1yrdate) - strtotime($currentdate)) / (60 * 60 * 24);

echo "<p style='color:red'>The difference is ".round($diff)." Days</p>";