PHP: How to check if a date is today, yesterday or tomorrow

Question

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.

Answer 1

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(); // This object represents current date/time
$today->setTime( 0, 0, 0 ); // reset time part, to prevent partial comparison

$match_date = DateTime::createFromFormat( "Y.m.d\TH:i", $timestamp );
$match_date->setTime( 0, 0, 0 ); // reset time part, 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";
}