How to Subtract Days from Date in PHP?

In this article, we will see how to subtract days from the given date object in PHP.

There are two methods to subtract the date from the given date, these are:

Using PHP date_sub() function

The date_sub() function is used to subtract some days, months, years, hours, minutes, and seconds from the given date. The function returns a DateTime object on success and returns FALSE on failure.

Syntax:

date_sub($object, $interval)

Example: This examples uses date_sub() function to subtract days from date in PHP.

PHP

<?php

// Create a date object
$date = date_create('2023-10-25');
date_sub($date, date_interval_create_from_date_string('10 days'));
echo date_format($date, 'Y-m-d') . "\n";


// Create a date object (Current Date)
$date = date_create();
date_sub($date, date_interval_create_from_date_string('12 days'));
echo date_format($date, 'Y-m-d'). "\n";

?>

Output

2023-10-15
2023-10-18

Using subtraction and PHP strtotime() function

The strtotime() function is used to convert an English textual date-time description to a UNIX timestamp. The function returns the time in seconds since the Unix Epoch. It can return the English textual date-time in date format using the PHP date() function.

Syntax:

$newDate =  date('Y-m-d', strtotime($date. ' - N days'))

Example: THis example uses subtraction and PHP strtotime() function to subtract days from date.

PHP

<?php

// Store the date into a variable
$date = '2023-10-25';
$newDate = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($date . ' - 10 days'));
echo $newDate . "\n";

// Create a date object (Current Date)
$newDate = date('Y-m-d', strtotime(' - 12 days'));
echo $newDate;

?>

Output

2023-10-15
2023-10-18