Elegant way to get the count of months between two dates?
date, php
Solution
For PHP >= 5.3
$d1 = new DateTime("2009-09-01");
$d2 = new DateTime("2010-05-01");
var_dump($d1->diff($d2)->m); // int(4)
var_dump($d1->diff($d2)->m + ($d1->diff($d2)->y*12)); // int(8)
DateTime::diff returns a DateInterval object
If you don't run with PHP 5.3 or higher, I guess you'll have to use unix timestamps :
$d1 = "2009-09-01";
$d2 = "2010-05-01";
echo (int)abs((strtotime($d1) - strtotime($d2))/(60*60*24*30)); // 8
But it's not very precise (there isn't always 30 days per month).
Last thing : if those dates come from your database, then use your DBMS to do this job, not PHP.
Edit: This code should be more precise if you can't use DateTime::diff or your RDBMS :
$d1 = strtotime("2009-09-01");
$d2 = strtotime("2010-05-01");
$min_date = min($d1, $d2);
$max_date = max($d1, $d2);
$i = 0;
while (($min_date = strtotime("+1 MONTH", $min_date)) <= $max_date) {
$i++;
}
echo $i; // 8
Problem
Let's assume I have two dates in variables, like ``` $date1 = "2009-09-01"; $date2 = "2010-05-01"; ``` I need to get the count of months between `$date2` and `$date1`(`$date2 >= $date1`). I.e. i need to get `8`. Is there a way to get it by using date function, or I have to explode my strings and do required calculations? Thanks.