How to generate random date between two dates using php?

Question

I am coding an application where i need to assign random date between two fixed timestamps

how i can achieve this using php i\'ve searched first but only found the a

Answer 1

i had a same situation before and none of the above answers fix my problem so i

Came with new function

function randomDate($startDate, $endDate, $count = 1 ,$dateFormat = 'Y-m-d H:i:s')
{
   //inspired by
    // https://gist.github.com/samcrosoft/6550473

    // Convert the supplied date to timestamp
    $minDateString = strtotime($startDate);
    $maxDateString = strtotime($endDate);

    if ($minDateString > $maxDateString) 
    {
        throw new Exception("From Date must be lesser than to date", 1);

    }

    for ($ctrlVarb = 1; $ctrlVarb <= $count; $ctrlVarb++) 
    { 
       $randomDate[] = mt_rand($minDateString, $maxDateString); 
    }
    if (sizeof($randomDate) == 1) 
    {
        $randomDate = date($dateFormat, $randomDate[0]);
        return $randomDate;
    }elseif (sizeof($randomDate) > 1) 
    {
        foreach ($randomDate as $randomDateKey => $randomDateValue) 
        {
           $randomDatearray[] =  date($dateFormat, $randomDateValue);
        }
        //return $randomDatearray;
        return array_values(array_unique($randomDatearray));
    }
}

Now the testing Part(Data may change while testing )

$fromDate = '2012-04-02';
$toDate = '2018-07-02';

print_r(randomDate($fromDate,$toDate,1));

result will be

2016-01-25 11:43:22

print_r(randomDate($fromDate,$toDate,1));

array:10 [▼
  0 => "2015-08-24 18:38:26"
  1 => "2018-01-13 21:12:59"
  2 => "2018-06-22 00:18:40"
  3 => "2016-09-14 02:38:04"
  4 => "2016-03-29 17:51:30"
  5 => "2018-03-30 07:28:48"
  6 => "2018-06-13 17:57:47"
  7 => "2017-09-24 16:00:40"
  8 => "2016-12-29 17:32:33"
  9 => "2013-09-05 02:56:14"
]

But after the few tests i was thinking about what if the inputs be like

$fromDate ='2018-07-02 09:20:39';
$toDate = '2018-07-02 10:20:39';

So the duplicates may occur while generating the large number of dates such as 10,000

so i have added array_unique and this will return only the non duplicates