Program to find the number of days between two dates in PHP

Last Updated : 03 Jul, 2020

Given two dates. The task is to find the number of days between the given dates.

Examples:

Input : date1 = "17-09-2018"
        date2 = "31-09-2018"
Output: Difference between two dates: 14 days 

Input : date1 = "2-05-2017"
        date2 = "25-12-2017"
Output: Difference between two dates: 237 Days

Note: The dates can be taken in any format. In the above example, the date is taken in dd-mm-yyyy format.

Method 1: In this method, first take two dates and get their differences. Below is the implementation of this method.

<?php
  
// PHP code to find the number of days
// between two given dates
  
// Function to find the difference 
// between two dates.
function dateDiffInDays($date1, $date2) 
{
    // Calculating the difference in timestamps
    $diff = strtotime($date2) - strtotime($date1);
      
    // 1 day = 24 hours
    // 24 * 60 * 60 = 86400 seconds
    return abs(round($diff / 86400));
}
  
// Start date
$date1 = "17-09-2018";
  
// End date
$date2 = "31-09-2018";
  
// Function call to find date difference
$dateDiff = dateDiffInDays($date1, $date2);
  
// Display the result
printf("Difference between two dates: "
   . $dateDiff . " Days ");
?>

Output:

Difference between two dates: 14 Days

Method 2 Using date_diff() Function: The date_diff() function is an inbuilt function in PHP which is used to calculate the difference between two dates. This function returns a DateInterval object on the success and returns FALSE on failure.

Example:

<?php
  
// PHP code to find the number of days
// between two given dates
  
// Creates DateTime objects
$datetime1 = date_create('17-09-2018');
$datetime2 = date_create('25-09-2018');
  
// Calculates the difference between DateTime objects
$interval = date_diff($datetime1, $datetime2);
  
// Display the result
echo $interval->format('Difference between two dates: %R%a days');
?>

Output:

Difference between two dates: +8 days

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