PHP - Show link expiration time in minutes - php

Question

I want to set a link expiration date with php:
I want that when user creates a new short link on my website it should be automatically deleted on the fifth day of creation.
I am totally confused with the following code. I want to put this code on user's notification page, so that it can inform them how many minutes are remaing for the link to be expired.
<?php
$created=time();
$expire=$created + 5;
$total_minutes=$expire / 5 / 60;
echo "Link expires in $total_minutes minutes";?>
It outputs an unexpected long number.
How can I implement this code so that it can output 7200 or remaining minutes?

Answer 1

time() returns UNIX timestamp.
If you want human readable output, look into DateTime class in PHP: http://php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php
Example:
<?php
$created = new DateTime('now');
$expiration_time = new DateTime('now +5minutes');
$compare = $created->diff($expiration_time);
$expires = $compare->format('%i');
echo "Your link will expire in: " . $expires . " minutes";
?>

Answer 2

The php function time() returns in seconds (since the Unix Epoch).
You adding "5" is just five seconds.
For five days you need to add sum of 5 * 24 * 60 *60 which is the number of seconds for five days.
In code:
$created = time();
$expires = $created + (5 * 24 * 60 * 60);
if ($expires < time()) {
echo 'File expired';
} else {
echo 'File expires in: ' . round(((time() + 1) - $created) / 60) . ' minutes';
}
Please refer to PHP: time()

Answer 3

<?php
$created = strtotime('June 21st 20:00 2015'); // time when link is created
$expire = $created + 432000; // 432000 = 5 days in seconds
$seconds_until_expiration = $expire - time();
$minutes_until_expiration = round($seconds_until_expiration / 60); // convert to minutes
echo "Link expires in $minutes_until_expiration minutes";
?>
Note that $created shouldn't be made at script runtime, but saved somewhere, otherwise this script will always report that the link expires in 5 days.