Compare given date with today

Question

I have following

$var = \"2010-01-21 00:00:00.0\"

I\'d like to compare this date against today\'s date (i.e. I\'d like to know if this

Answer 1

That format is perfectly appropriate for a standard string comparison e.g.

if ($date1 > $date2){
  //Action
}

To get today's date in that format, simply use: date("Y-m-d H:i:s").

So:

$today = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
$date = "2010-01-21 00:00:00";

if ($date < $today) {}

That's the beauty of that format: it orders nicely. Of course, that may be less efficient, depending on your exact circumstances, but it might also be a whole lot more convenient and lead to more maintainable code - we'd need to know more to truly make that judgement call.

For the correct timezone, you can use, for example,

date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');

Click here to refer to the available PHP Timezones.