calculate the difference between 2 timestamps in php

Question

I am using 2 timestamp in my table which is starttime datatype- timestamp and as current timestamp. endtime datatype-timestamp and default as 0000-00-00 00:00:00

how to calculate the difference between 2 timestamps in php starttime:2016-11-30 03:55:06 endtimetime: 2016-11-30 11:55:06

Answer 1

Any procedural way should be avoided. Use OOP method for date time difference:

$datetime1 = new DateTime('2016-11-30 03:55:06');//start time $datetime2 = new DateTime('2016-11-30 11:55:06');//end time $interval = $datetime1->diff($datetime2); echo $interval->format('%Y years %m months %d days %H hours %i minutes %s seconds');//00 years 0 months 0 days 08 hours 0 minutes 0 seconds 

You can setup difference format as per your needs.

%Y - use for difference in year %m - use for difference in months %d - use for difference in days %H - use for difference in hours %i - use for difference in minutes %s - use for difference in seconds 

You can remove any of above values as per your need. For example if you only are interested in hour difference and you know that difference cant be more than 24 hours then use only %H.

If you want to have total difference in seconds then you can use:

echo $difference_in_seconds = strtotime('2016-11-30 11:55:06') - strtotime('2016-11-30 03:55:06');//28800 

Depends upon your need and the final format in which you want to have time difference.

For reference check: http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.diff.php

I hope it helps

Answer 2

You can convert your timestamps to unix timestamp (time in seconds) using php strtotime and then take the difference. You now have the difference in time in seconds and can convert to what you need...hours, min, days

http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php

ex:

$ts1 = strtotime($start); $ts2 = strtotime($end);      $seconds_diff = $ts2 - $ts1;                             $time = ($seconds_diff/3600);