mysql - Calculates difference between two dates in PHP

Question

HI, i have a couple of posts in my MySql database server, one of the info content in each post is the date and time in the format datetime (Ex. 2010-11-26 21:55:09) when the post was made.

So, i want to retrive the actual date and time from the SQL server with the function NOW() and calculates how many seconds or minutes or hours or days ago was post the info.

I dont know how to create this php script but i know that for sure is allready made, so thanks for any help.

Answer 1

you could use the date_diff() function

http://php.net/manual/en/function.date-diff.php

Something like...

<?php 
$now = time();
$then = $posttime;
$diff = date_diff($now,$then);
echo $diff->format('%R%d days'); #change format for different timescales
?>

edit --

I actually solve this issue on one of my twitter apps using this function...

function time_since ( $start )
{
    $end = time();
    $diff = $end - $start;
    $days = floor ( $diff/86400 ); //calculate the days
    $diff = $diff - ($days*86400); // subtract the days
    $hours = floor ( $diff/3600 ); // calculate the hours
    $diff = $diff - ($hours*3600); // subtract the hours
    $mins = floor ( $diff/60 ); // calculate the minutes
    $diff = $diff - ($mins*60); // subtract the mins
    $secs = $diff; // what's left is the seconds;
    if ($secs!=0) 
    {
        $secs .= " seconds";
        if ($secs=="1 seconds") $secs = "1 second"; 
    }
    else $secs = '';
    if ($mins!=0) 
    {
        $mins .= " mins ";
        if ($mins=="1 mins ") $mins = "1 min "; 
        $secs = '';
    }
    else $mins = '';
    if ($hours!=0) 
    {
        $hours .= " hours ";
        if ($hours=="1 hours ") $hours = "1 hour ";             
        $secs = '';
    }
    else $hours = '';
    if ($days!=0) 
    {
        $days .= " days "; 
        if ($days=="1 days ") $days = "1 day ";                 
        $mins = '';
        $secs = '';
        if ($days == "-1 days ") {
            $days = $hours = $mins = '';
            $secs = "less than 10 seconds";
        }
    }
    else $days = '';
    return "$days $hours $mins $secs ago";
}

You pass it in a unix timestamp of the time to check (the post time) and it returns the various string.