Could you echo your variables $setTime and $currentTime, just before deteDiff function and post output here, like:

echo $setTime;
echo $currentTime;
echo dateDiff($setTime, $currentTime, 3);

If I do:
echo dateDiff(1267074000, time(), 3);
it works fine.

But if I do:
echo dateDiff($setTime, $currentTime, 3);
it doesn’t work, even though holding the same results.
Is there anything I’m doing wrong?

Cheers and much thanks in advance.

Is those Operational days always from Mon to Fri?
And is those hours fixed 08:00 – 22:00?

I have a question to all,
How to calculate minutes “Operational Hours” within a period.

case example :
Date range : 2011-11-01 to 2011-11-30,
Non Operational Hours : between 22:00 to 08:00 week day (Mon to Frid)
Non Operational Days : Sat + Sun

Quest :
How to Calculate Total “Minutes” Operational Time ??

Please help,
thanks for your advice …

BP

First if we compare just fixed value approach, with dateDiff:

$start ='2011-12-18 23:19:00';
$end ='2012-02-08 13:20:00';
$interval=3;
 
echo (strtotime($end)-strtotime($start))/(60*60) . "\n";
 
echo dateDiff( $start , $end , 'hour') . "\n";

Output:

1238.0166666667
1238

So this looks good, exactly same, but dateDiff output without decimals, as it should be.

Then divide results with three (your interval):
1238.0166666667 / 3 = 412.672222222
1238 / 3 = 412.666666667

Then add one (I don’t know why, but if you just have to add one):
412.672222222 + 1 = 413.672222222
412.666666667 + 1 = 413.666666667

Then you use floor to round first value fractions down:
floor(413.672222222) = 413
413.666666667

So actually second value is 413.666666667 at this point, not 414…and first value fractions is rounded down and it’s 413…

Suppose I have the following two time-stamps:

$start =’2011-12-18 23:19:00′;
$end =’2012-02-08 13:20:00′;
$interval=3;

I tried to compute the difference in hours using two different approaches and I got a small difference.

1.
$howmany=floor($difference/($interval*60*60)+1);

output was 413

2.$howmany=(dateDiff( $start , $end , ‘hour’)/$interval)+1;

out was 414

I tried the same two approaches for minutes, days, and weeks and answers were IDENTICAL. but just never figured out why in this specific case answers weren’t the same. Any suggestions?

Thank you,
Sevag

Yes, this is old post and PHP’s own Datetime:diff is useful on PHP 5.3, but you still need to format output manually. And of course here is many custom modifications from original version… ;)

<?php
 
  // Set timezone
  date_default_timezone_set("UTC");
 
  // Time format is UNIX timestamp or
  // PHP strtotime compatible strings
  function dateDiff($time1, $time2, $interval) {
    // If not numeric then convert texts to unix timestamps
    if (!is_int($time1)) {
      $time1 = strtotime($time1);
    }
    if (!is_int($time2)) {
      $time2 = strtotime($time2);
    }
 
    // If time1 is bigger than time2
    // Then swap time1 and time2
    if ($time1 > $time2) {
      $ttime = $time1;
      $time1 = $time2;
      $time2 = $ttime;
    }
 
    // Set up intervals and diffs arrays
    $intervals = array('year','month','day','hour','minute','second');
    if (!in_array($interval, $intervals)) {
      return false;
    }
 
    $diff = 0;
    // Create temp time from time1 and interval
    $ttime = strtotime("+1 " . $interval, $time1);
    // Loop until temp time is smaller than time2
    while ($time2 >= $ttime) {
      $time1 = $ttime;
      $diff++;
      // Create new temp time from time1 and interval
      $ttime = strtotime("+1 " . $interval, $time1);
    }
 
    return $diff;
  }
 
  // Testing...
  echo "Timestamps 2011-12-16 10:00 - 2011-12-17 10:25\n";
  echo "Minute interval: " . dateDiff('2011-12-16 10:00', '2011-12-17 10:25', 'minute') . "\n";
  echo "Hour interval: " . dateDiff('2011-12-16 10:00', '2011-12-17 10:25', 'hour') . "\n";
  echo "Day interval: " . dateDiff('2011-12-16 10:00', '2011-12-17 10:25', 'day') . "\n";
 
  echo "\n\n";
 
  echo "Timestamps 2011-12-16 10:00 - 2014-06-17 10:25\n";
  echo "Hour interval: " . dateDiff('2011-12-16 10:00', '2014-06-17 10:25', 'hour') . "\n";
  echo "Day interval: " . dateDiff('2011-12-16 10:00', '2014-06-17 10:25', 'day') . "\n";
  echo "Month interval: " . dateDiff('2011-12-16 10:00', '2014-06-17 10:25', 'month') . "\n";
  echo "Year interval: " . dateDiff('2011-12-16 10:00', '2014-06-17 10:25', 'year') . "\n";
 
?>

Output:

Timestamps 2011-12-16 10:00 - 2011-12-17 10:25
Minute interval: 1465
Hour interval: 24
Day interval: 1

Timestamps 2011-12-16 10:00 - 2014-06-17 10:25
Hour interval: 21936
Day interval: 914
Month interval: 30
Year interval: 2

Note. first examples use your timestamps and last examples use date 2014-06-17… :)

I just tested this quickly and seems to be working, please let me know, if you have any problems with that?

but supposing minutes interval

instead of getting
1 day 3 minutes

I get
1443 minutes

Do you need output example as 24.2 hours or is just 24 hours integer value enough? This full double/floating point value with decimals is easy to get with minute, hour, day, week intervals, but it’s very hard to get with month and year intervals, because we can’t use fixed seconds for month and year. If you want to use this date diff function logic and accuracy, then it’s only possible to get integer values.

I need this for the following reason

If my client asked for service every 10 minutes between 2011-12-16 10:00 till 2011-12-17 10:25

Since he picked minutes as interval then i want something that gives me in this case 1465.
Then i will do simply 1465 / (10) = 14.65. So this means 14 services.

Now if he were same time interval but he picked every 2 hours
Then the formula should give me 24.2
Then i do 24.2 / 2 = 12.1 . so this means 12 services.

Thanks to help all

What intervals you want to use? Seconds, minutes, hours, days…?

For example, i want the following:

difference between 2011-12-14 21:54 and 2011-12-16 20:45

— if i need it in HOURS then it will give for example 22.8 Hours
— if i need it in MINUTES for examples it will return 1368
and so on??

if we were able to to this it will HELP me alot.

THANKS AGAIN
Sevag

Thanks, I actually post this style solution here and also native MySQL example. ;)


$now = new DateTime('now');
$then = new DateTime($date);
$diff = $now->diff($then);
echo $diff->format('%a days');