PHP giving fatal error on comparing dates - php

Question

I have one date in database, and I want to compare it with the current date. So I write the following function:
$today = new DateTime();
$today_date = $current_date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
function do_diifernce($date_1, $date_2) {
$my_date = $date_1;
$createDate = new DateTime($my_date);
$strip = $createDate->format('Y-m-d');
$difference = $date_2->diff($createDate, true);
$difference->total_difference = $difference->y . "." . $difference->m;
return $difference;
}
$comparison = do_diifernce($databse_date, $today_date);
So
$databse_date = 2019-06-01 00:00:00.000000
$today_date = 2019-05-06 10:48:01
But I can't print the value of $comparison.
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function diff() on string
How can I solve it?

Answer 1

You pass in $today_date to do_diifernce(), which is a string (as you have formatted it with format()). You can either pass $today in (which is an object), or include a condition that checks if its an object or not.
function do_difference($date_1, $date_2) {
// Check if the arguments were DateTime objects - if not, instantiate them as that
if (!($date_1 instanceof DateTime)) {
$date_1 = new DateTime($date_1);
}
if (!($date_2 instanceof DateTime)) {
$date_2 = new DateTime($date_2);
}
// Compare the difference and return the Y and m properties
$difference = $date_2->diff($date_1);
$difference->total = $difference->y . "." . $difference->m;
return $difference;
}
$today = new DateTime();
$comparison = do_difference($databse_date, $today);

Answer 2

You were playing date 2 as string which should be treated as datetime object to get the difference between two datetime objects.
function do_diifernce($date_1, $date_2)
{
$createDate1 = new DateTime($date_1);
$createDate2 = new DateTime($date_2);
$difference = $createDate2->diff($createDate1);
$sign = ($createDate1 < $createDate2 ? '-':'+');
$difference->total_difference = $difference->format("%r%a");
return $difference;
}
$databse_date = "2019-05-01 00:00:00";
$today_date = "2019-05-06 10:48:01";
$comparison = do_diifernce($databse_date, $today_date);
print_r($comparison);die;
Here is official doc.
You check that array as there is no difference of year and month as both dates belongs to same month and year so its coming 0.0

Answer 3

You got an error here: $difference = $date_2->diff($createDate, true);. AFAIK, the diff() function is deprecated after PHP 5.3.
If you want to calculate the difference between two dates, you can use date_diff as follows.
<?php
$date1 = date_create("2000-04-01");
$date2 = date_create("2019-04-06");
$diff = date_diff($date1, $date2);
?>

Answer 4

It throws an error, because you call format on date2, which returns a string, no DateTime object.
Remove the call to format, then your comparison should work.
All you have to do, is to replace the last line with the following:
$comparison=do_diifernce($databse_date, $today);