CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpdatedatetime
fishcracker
fishcracker

Reputation: 2499

DateTime format reference & determine days to months

I used DateTime to get the diff of two dates. Directly from the PHP documentation example:

$date1 = new DateTime('2012/03/15');
$date2 = new DateTime('2012/6/9');
$interval = $date1->diff($date2,true);
$days = $interval->format('%R%a days');

This will result in +86 days, I wonder where can I get the reference for those %R%a I don't know what they mean, but I just know by seeing that %R = + while %a is number of days.

Second, now by having the value 86 I can have at least a variable that I can use to tell that $date1 and $date2 is not within the length of 3 months (3 months is at least 90 days). I can simply use an if-else for this, however for precision, is there another way (built-in PHP functions or library) to determine that the value I have is within the period of 3 months?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 199

Answers (3)

deceze
deceze

Reputation: 522110

  1. Check the documentation for DateTime::diff.
  2. See that it returns a DateInterval, click link to its documentation.
  3. Read documentation for its format method.

Use if ($interval->format('%m') > 3) to test if it's over three months. Notice that this is only the months portion of the interval, e.g. "3" of "2 years, 3 months". Take the years into account as well. You should not just use days for this, since there's no constant number of days in a month. 90 days and 3 months are not the same thing.

Upvotes: 2

Mark Baker
Mark Baker

Reputation: 212412

http://www.php.net/manual/en/dateinterval.format.php for the docs

$months = 3;
if ($interval->format('%m') < $months) {
   echo "Less than $months months";
}

Upvotes: 1

Rijk
Rijk

Reputation: 11301

You can find it in the documentation as well:

%   Literal %   %
Y   Years, numeric, at least 2 digits with leading 0    01, 03
y   Years, numeric  1, 3
M   Months, numeric, at least 2 digits with leading 0   01, 03, 12
m   Months, numeric 1, 3, 12
D   Days, numeric, at least 2 digits with leading 0 01, 03, 31
d   Days, numeric   1, 3, 31
a   Total number of days as a result of a DateTime:diff() or (unknown) otherwise    4, 18, 8123
H   Hours, numeric, at least 2 digits with leading 0    01, 03, 23
h   Hours, numeric  1, 3, 23
I   Minutes, numeric, at least 2 digits with leading 0  01, 03, 59
i   Minutes, numeric    1, 3, 59
S   Seconds, numeric, at least 2 digits with leading 0  01, 03, 57
s   Seconds, numeric    1, 3, 57
R   Sign "-" when negative, "+" when positive   -, +
r   Sign "-" when negative, empty when positive -,

Upvotes: 2

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