In this tutorial, you shall learn how to find the difference between two given dates in PHP using date_diff() function, with example programs.

PHP – Difference between Two Dates

To calculate the difference between two dates in PHP, call date_diff() date/time function, and pass the two dates as argument to it.

date_diff() function returns a DateInterval object, or FALSE if calculating the difference is not successful. DateInterval object has properties $y for year, $m for months, $d for days, $h for hours, $i for minutes, $s for seconds, $f for microseconds, $invert to represent if the interval is negative or not.

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Examples

1. Find the difference between two dates: date1 – date2

In the following program, we shall take two dates in $date1 and $date2 and find their difference.

PHP Program

<?php
$date1 = date_create( "2022-01-15 12:23:17" );
$date2 = date_create( "2022-02-22 11:05:25" );
$diff = date_diff( $date1, $date2 );
print_r( $diff );
?>

Output

PHP - Difference between Two Dates

We can access the individual properties of the DateInterval object, as shown in the following program.

PHP Program

<?php
$date1 = date_create( "2022-01-15 12:23:17" );
$date2 = date_create( "2022-02-22 11:05:25" );
$diff = date_diff( $date1, $date2 );
echo "Years : ", $diff -> y;
echo "<br>";
echo "Months : ", $diff -> m;
echo "<br>";
echo "Days : ", $diff -> d;
echo "<br>";
echo "Hours : ", $diff -> h;
echo "<br>";
echo "Minutes : ", $diff -> i;
echo "<br>";
echo "Seconds : ", $diff -> s;
echo "<br>";
?>

Output

PHP - Difference between Two Dates

Conclusion

In this PHP Tutorial, we learned how to find the difference between two dates in PHP, using date_diff() function.