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

You can use the DateTime class:

$past   = new DateTime("2010-01-01 00:00:00");
$now    = new DateTime();
$future = new DateTime("2021-01-01 00:00:00");

Comparison operators work*:

var_dump($past   < $now);         // bool(true)
var_dump($future < $now);         // bool(false)

var_dump($now == $past);          // bool(false)
var_dump($now == new DateTime()); // bool(true)
var_dump($now == $future);        // bool(false)

var_dump($past   > $now);         // bool(false)
var_dump($future > $now);         // bool(true)

It is also possible to grab the timestamp values from DateTime objects and compare them:

var_dump($past  ->getTimestamp());                        // int(1262286000)
var_dump($now   ->getTimestamp());                        // int(1431686228)
var_dump($future->getTimestamp());                        // int(1577818800)
var_dump($past  ->getTimestamp() < $now->getTimestamp()); // bool(true)
var_dump($future->getTimestamp() > $now->getTimestamp()); // bool(true)

^{* Note that === returns false when comparing two different DateTime objects even when they represent the same date.}