php - Get time difference

Question

How can I compute time difference in PHP?

example: 2:00 and 3:30.

I want to convert the time to seconds then subtract them then convert it back to hours and minutes to know the difference. Is there an easier way to get the difference?

Answer 1

Look at the PHP DateTime object.

$dateA = new DateTime('2:00');
$dateB = new DateTime('3:00');

$difference = $dateA->diff($dateB);

(assuming you have >= PHP 5.3)

You can also do it the procedural way...

$dateA = strtotime('2:00');
$dateB = strtotime('3:00');

$difference = $dateB - $dateA;

See it on CodePad.org.

You can get the hour offset like so...

$hours = $difference / 3600;

If you are dealing with times that fall between a 24 hour period (0:00 - 23:59), you could also do...

$hours = (int) date('g', $difference);

Though that is probably too inflexible to be worth implementing.