Simulate "do not disturb" functionality in PHP - php

Question

I want to check between two user-specified times everyday and not run some function call (i.e. "Do Not Disturb").
For example, a user set a "Do Not Disturb" time block between 10:00pm to 6:00am (next day).
FYI, no days/dates are being specified by the end-user, ONLY times. This will run consistently everyday, 7 days a week.
So between 10pm-6am (next day), any function call is ignored. This is what I've written up so far:
$now = time(); // or $now = strtotime('11:00pm'); to simulate time to test
$start = strtotime('10:00pm');
$end = strtotime('6:00am +1 day');
// alternative time block
//$start = strtotime('10:00am');
//$end = strtotime('11:00am');
//debug
//echo date('r', $now) . '<br>' . date('r', $start) . '<br>' . date('r', $end) . '<br><br>';
if($start > $now || $now > $end) {
echo 'disturb';
} else {
echo 'do not disturb';
}
But this doesn't seem to work, because once you reach midnight, it's a new day, but the $end variable is already a day ahead.
I tried putting it a day behind, but then the issue is that the value of $end ends up being lower than the value of $start, which isn't correct.
I also tried adding a day to the $now variable whenever the time reaches midnight, but the issue w/ that is, what if the $start and $end times are within the same day?
What am I missing here?

Answer 1

Apparently you're trying to build some kind of calendar functionality here.
If you use strtotime('10:00pm'); this will change to the timestamp of the next day after midnight.
So you need to give the variable a date
$start = strtotime('2015-02-26 10:00pm');
$end = strtotime('2015-02-27 6:00am');
Not sure how you store these time blocks, but ideally they would be stored in a database table.
If it's every day the same you could do:
$now = time(); // or $now = strtotime('11:00pm'); to simulate time to test
$start = strtotime('10:00pm');
$end = strtotime('6:00am'); // without the +1 day
if($start > $end) {
if($start > $now && $now > $end) {
echo 'disturb';
} else {
echo 'do not disturb';
}
}else{
if($now < $start || $now > $end) {
echo 'disturb';
} else {
echo 'do not disturb';
}
}

Answer 2

That's a nice question actually,
You can use the the relatively new object oriented way of dealing with times.
I'll link you some info as I don't have time to write an entire example
http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.diff.php
http://php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php
http://php.net/manual/en/class.dateinterval.php
specifically from the docs :
<?php
$datetime1 = new DateTime('2009-10-11');
$datetime2 = new DateTime('2009-10-13');
$interval = $datetime1->diff($datetime2);
echo $interval->format('%R%a days');
?>
Hope it helps

Answer 3

I would convert to DateTime() objects instead. Then you won't get any issues with days ending.
// obviously you'll need to feed in the date as well so
// that might involve some refactoring
$now = new DateTime();
$start = new DateTime('2015-02-26 10:00');
$end = new DateTime('2015-02-27 06:00');
Now you can compare as before.
If you don't know the date and your users are only specifying time, you might need to add the date dynamically. These are just for example.
Edit: to cope with unknown days, you could dynamically generate after grabbing today:
$today = new DateTime();
$start = new DateTime($today->format('Y-m-d') . ' 10:00');
$end = new DateTime($today->format('Y-m-d') . ' 06:00');
$end->add(new DateInterval('P1D'));