Date Difference in php on days?

Question

Is there a quick way to calculate date difference in php? For example:

$date1 = '2009-11-12 12:09:08';
$date2 = '2009-12-01 08:20:11';

And then do a calculation, $date2 minus $date1

I read php.net documentation, but no luck. Is there a quick way to do it?

user_119829 · Answer

strtotime will convert your date string to a unix time stamp. (seconds since the unix epoch.

$ts1 = strtotime($date1);
$ts2 = strtotime($date2);

$seconds_diff = $ts2 - $ts1;