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I would like to check, if a date is today, tomorrow, yesterday or else. But my code doesn't work.

Code:

$timestamp = "2014.09.02T13:34"; $date = date("d.m.Y H:i"); $match_date = date('d.m.Y H:i', strtotime($timestamp)); if($date == $match_date) { //Today } elseif(strtotime("-1 day", $date) == $match_date) { //Yesterday } elseif(strtotime("+1 day", $date) == $match_date) { //Tomorrow } else { //Sometime }

The Code always goes in the else case.

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  • How is $timestamp defined and where? Commented Sep 2, 2014 at 11:31
  • check date using strtotime Commented Sep 2, 2014 at 11:32
  • I would advice you to take a look at Datetime object.. And most likely your $timestamp isn't being converted correctly. Commented Sep 2, 2014 at 11:34
  • The $timestamp is Like "2014.09.02T13:34" Commented Sep 2, 2014 at 11:34

10 Answers 10

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62

First. You have mistake in using function strtotime see PHP documentation

int strtotime ( string $time [, int $now = time() ] )

You need modify your code to pass integer timestamp into this function.

Second. You use format d.m.Y H:i that includes time part. If you wish to compare only dates, you must remove time part, e.g. `$date = date("d.m.Y");``

Third. I am not sure if it works in the same way for you, but my PHP doesn't understand date format from $timestamp and returns 01.01.1970 02:00 into $match_date

$timestamp = "2014.09.02T13:34"; date('d.m.Y H:i', strtotime($timestamp)) === "01.01.1970 02:00";

You need to check if strtotime($timestamp) returns correct date string. If no, you need to specify format which is used in $timestamp variable. You can do this using one of functions date_parse_from_format or DateTime::createFromFormat

This is a work example:

$timestamp = "2014.09.02T13:34"; $today = new DateTime("today"); // This object represents current date/time with time set to midnight $match_date = DateTime::createFromFormat( "Y.m.d\\TH:i", $timestamp ); $match_date->setTime( 0, 0, 0 ); // set time part to midnight, in order to prevent partial comparison $diff = $today->diff( $match_date ); $diffDays = (integer)$diff->format( "%R%a" ); // Extract days count in interval switch( $diffDays ) { case 0: echo "//Today"; break; case -1: echo "//Yesterday"; break; case +1: echo "//Tomorrow"; break; default: echo "//Sometime"; }
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4 Comments

What sort of case would lead to the "sometimes" in your switch? Only when $today or $match_date don't properly format as dates, maybe?
A possible improvement: $today can be defined as just new DateTime("today"), which means today at midnight -- the time part will be automatically zeroed out.
Checking (integer)$diff->format( "%R%a" ) == 0 on its own is inaccurate. It is true for the same day ten years ago too. Check $diff->days == 0 for today, and $diff->days == 1 with $diff->invert for yesterday / tomorrow.
You have to set the time zone ahead of all of this code otherwise it uses UTC time and may mean "now" is a day ahead of your saved date, which appears to be the same. ex. date_default_timezone_set('America/Chicago');
31 
<?php $current = strtotime(date("Y-m-d")); $date = strtotime("2014-09-05"); $datediff = $date - $current; $difference = floor($datediff/(60*60*24)); if($difference==0) { echo 'today'; } else if($difference > 1) { echo 'Future Date'; } else if($difference > 0) { echo 'tomorrow'; } else if($difference < -1) { echo 'Long Back'; } else { echo 'yesterday'; } ?>
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6 Comments

Every time you see the number 86400 (60 * 60 * 24) in code, you know it has a bug. As is true in this case also: ideone.com/2D2N8I
@Jon : Why this number is considered as a bug?
@DeepakJain because not all days are 86400 seconds long. There are shorter days and longer days because of daylight savings time, there are leap seconds, all of these are of course rare occurrences but they will break your code when they happen. See for example in the ideone link I gave above how this code reports the wrong result if you pick certain specific dates.
Thanks @Jon for the explanation! I'll make a note of it as it seems an important point to remember.
Are you sure this works? if the date belongs to 17 hours ago and let's say it's 4PM , it belongs to yesterday but your code is gonna show Today
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16

I think this will help you:

<?php $date = new DateTime(); $match_date = new DateTime($timestamp); $interval = $date->diff($match_date); if($interval->days == 0) { //Today } elseif($interval->days == 1) { if($interval->invert == 0) { //Yesterday } else { //Tomorrow } } else { //Sometime }
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3 Comments

This works pretty well. Just a warning, it is not always accurate. For example, if the time now is 10:30am and the time yesterday is 10:58am, $interval->days == 0, which makes that date seem to be "Today," which is not true.
This is not a check for "today", but for "last 24 hrs"
Today is not difference between dates. Today is the same day.
11

Simple one liners for today/yesterday/tomorrow:

$someDate = '2021-11-07'; // date in any format $isToday = date('Ymd') == date('Ymd', strtotime($someDate)); $isYesterday = date('Ymd') == date('Ymd', strtotime($someDate) + 86400); $isTomorrow = date('Ymd') == date('Ymd', strtotime($someDate) - 86400);
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10

There is no built-in functions to do that in Php (shame ^^). You want to compare a date string to today, you could use a simple substr to achieve it:

if (substr($timestamp, 0, 10) === date('Y.m.d')) { today } elseif (substr($timestamp, 0, 10) === date('Y.m.d', strtotime('-1 day')) { yesterday }

No date conversion, simple.

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2 Comments

If you have the integers, why would you compare the strings? :D Btw which language has such function?
@IvankaTodorova Swift does!
6 
function getRangeDateString($timestamp) { if ($timestamp) { $currentTime=strtotime('today'); // Reset time to 00:00:00 $timestamp=strtotime(date('Y-m-d 00:00:00',$timestamp)); $days=round(($timestamp-$currentTime)/86400); switch($days) { case '0'; return 'Today'; break; case '-1'; return 'Yesterday'; break; case '-2'; return 'Day before yesterday'; break; case '1'; return 'Tomorrow'; break; case '2'; return 'Day after tomorrow'; break; default: if ($days > 0) { return 'In '.$days.' days'; } else { return ($days*-1).' days ago'; } break; } } }
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2

Pass the date into the function.

 <?php function getTheDay($date) { $curr_date=strtotime(date("Y-m-d H:i:s")); $the_date=strtotime($date); $diff=floor(($curr_date-$the_date)/(60*60*24)); switch($diff) { case 0: return "Today"; break; case 1: return "Yesterday"; break; default: return $diff." Days ago"; } } ?>
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1 Comment

Except, this is really looking for more than a difference of 24 hours. If you are checking a time of yesterday afternoon compared to this morning, it should say yesterday. The key is to ignore the time parts, and look at just the dates. If you format each date with date('Y-m-d') then it will be comparing midnight on each day and they will either be equal or a multiple of 24 hours apart. Technically, you then wouldn't need the floor() function either.
1

Here is a more polished version of the accepted answer. It accepts only timestamps and returns a relative date or a formatted date string for everything +/-2 days

<?php /** * Relative time * * date Format http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php * strftime Format http://php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php * latter can be used with setlocale(LC_ALL, 'de_DE@euro', 'de_DE', 'deu_deu'); * * @param timestamp $target * @param timestamp $base start time, defaults to time() * @param string $format use date('Y') or strftime('%Y') format string * @return string */ function relative_time($target, $base = NULL, $format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s') { if(is_null($base)) { $base = time(); } $baseDate = new DateTime(); $targetDate = new DateTime(); $baseDate->setTimestamp($base); $targetDate->setTimestamp($target); // don't modify original dates $baseDateTemp = clone $baseDate; $targetDateTemp = clone $targetDate; // normalize times -> reset to midnight that day $baseDateTemp = $baseDateTemp->modify('midnight'); $targetDateTemp = $targetDateTemp->modify('midnight'); $interval = (int) $baseDateTemp->diff($targetDateTemp)->format('%R%a'); d($baseDate->format($format)); switch($interval) { case 0: return (string) 'today'; break; case -1: return (string) 'yesterday'; break; case 1: return (string) 'tomorrow'; break; default: if(strpos($format,'%') !== false ) { return (string) strftime($format, $targetDate->getTimestamp()); } return (string) $targetDate->format($format); break; } } setlocale(LC_ALL, 'de_DE@euro', 'de_DE', 'deu_deu'); echo relative_time($weather->time, null, '%A, %#d. %B'); // Montag, 6. August echo relative_time($weather->time, null, 'l, j. F'); // Monday, 6. August
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1

This worked for me, where I wanted to display keyword "today" or "yesterday" only if date was today and previous day otherwise display date in d-M-Y format

<?php function findDayDiff($date){ $param_date=date('d-m-Y',strtotime($date); $response = $param_date; if($param_date==date('d-m-Y',strtotime("now"))){ $response = 'Today'; }else if($param_date==date('d-m-Y',strtotime("-1 days"))){ $response = 'Yesterday'; } return $response; } ?>
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1 
function get_when($date) { $current = strtotime(date('Y-m-d H:i')); $date_diff = $date - $current; $difference = round($date_diff/(60*60*24)); if($difference >= 0) { return 'Today'; } else if($difference == -1) { return 'Yesterday'; } else if($difference == -2 || $difference == -3 || $difference == -4 || $difference == -5) { return date('l', $date); } else { return ('on ' . date('jS/m/y', $date)); } } get_when(date('Y-m-d H:i', strtotime($your_targeted_date)));
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While this code snippet may solve the question, including an explanation really helps to improve the quality of your post. Remember that you are answering the question for readers in the future, and those people might not know the reasons for your code suggestion.

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