PHP Date Exercises : Time difference in days and years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds between two dates

Last update on June 03 2025 12:56:50 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

11. Time Difference in Detailed Units

Write a PHP script to get time difference in days and years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds between two dates.

Note : Use DateTime class.

Sample Solution:

PHP Code:

<?php
$date1 = new DateTime('2012-06-01 02:12:51'); // Creating a DateTime object for the first date.
$date2 = $date1->diff(new DateTime('2014-05-12 11:10:00')); // Calculating the difference between two dates.
echo $date2->days.'Total days'."\n"; // Outputting the total number of days between the two dates.
echo $date2->y.' years'."\n"; // Outputting the number of years in the difference.
echo $date2->m.' months'."\n"; // Outputting the number of months in the difference.
echo $date2->d.' days'."\n"; // Outputting the number of days in the difference.
echo $date2->h.' hours'."\n"; // Outputting the number of hours in the difference.
echo $date2->i.' minutes'."\n"; // Outputting the number of minutes in the difference.
echo $date2->s.' seconds'."\n"; // Outputting the number of seconds in the difference.
?>

Output:

710Total days                                               
1 years                                                     
11 months                                                   
10 days                                                     
8 hours                                                     
57 minutes                                                  
9 seconds

Explanation:

In the exercise above,

$date1 = new DateTime('2012-06-01 02:12:51');: Create a DateTime object representing June 1, 2012, at 02:12:51.
$date2 = $date1->diff(new DateTime('2014-05-12 11:10:00'));: Calculates the difference between the DateTime object $date1 and the date May 12, 2014, at 11:10:00.
$date2->days: Get the total number of days in the difference between the two dates.
$date2->y, $date2->m, $date2->d, $date2->h, $date2->i, $date2->s: Get the number of years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds in the difference, respectively.

Flowchart :

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

Write a PHP script to calculate the difference between two dates using DateTime objects and output the difference in years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
Write a PHP function that accepts two date strings and returns an associative array with detailed time differences between them.
Write a PHP program that calculates the time elapsed from a user-specified date to now, formatted with multiple units.
Write a PHP script to display the detailed time difference between two events, using DateTime::diff() and formatting the output elegantly.

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PHP Code Editor:

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