PHP ceil returning a float - php

Question

I've created a function to return the difference between two dates
<?php
class days {
function dateDiff($start, $end) {
$start_ts = strtotime($start);
$end_ts = strtotime($end);
$diff = $end_ts - $start_ts;
$diff1 = ceil($diff / 86400);
return $diff1;
}
}
I have this code in the view :
<?php
$a = new days();
$days = $a->dateDiff($v[17], date('Y/m/d'));
if ($days < 30) {
$ds = $days;
$tm = 'days';
} else {
if ($days < 365) {
$ds = $days / 30;
$tm = 'months';
} else {
$ds = $days / 365;
$tm = 'years';
}
}
$v[17] is the date returned from the database to the view.
When I enter for instance an article in august 2011... It will display :
2.9666666666667 months ago
I ask myself ... How this Ceil method could not return an int value as it's supposed to do?
if that's normal, then what's the solution?
Thank you in advance :)

Answer 1

The ceil funciton works just fine when it returns the number of days.
But the problem is here:
if ($days<365){
$ds=$days/30;
$tm='months';
}
You didn't use ceil this time! You should try something like $ds = ceil($days / 30);.
Same thing for the number of years.
It would probably be more precise to use round instead of ceil, so that 32 days don't translate in 2 months:
$days = $a->dateDiff('10 oct 2011',date('Y/m/d'));
if ($days < 30) {
$ds = $days;
$tm = 'day';
}
else {
if ($days < 365){
$ds = round($days / 30);
$tm = 'month';
}
else {
$ds = round($days / 365);
$tm = 'year';
}
}
if ($ds > 1) {
$tm .= 's';
}
echo "$ds $tm"; # => 1 month; or 2 months using ceil function