How to get month between two dates php

I recently needed to calculate age in months ranging from prenatal to 5 years old (60+ months).

Neither of the answers above worked for me. The first one I tried, which is basically a 1 liner for deceze's answer

$bdate = strtotime('2011-11-04'); 
$edate = strtotime('2011-12-03');
$age = ((date('Y',$edate) - date('Y',$bdate)) * 12) + (date('m',$edate) - date('m',$bdate));
. . .

This fails with the set dates, obviously the answer should be 0 as the month mark (2011-12-04) hasn't been reached yet, how ever the code returns 1.

The second method I tried, using Adam's code

$bdate = strtotime('2011-01-03'); 
$edate = strtotime('2011-02-03');
$age = 0;

while (strtotime('+1 MONTH', $bdate) < $edate) {
    $age++;
    $bdate = strtotime('+1 MONTH', $bdate);
}
. . .

This fails and says 0 months, when it should be 1.

What did work for me, is a little expansion of this code. What I used is the following:

$bdate = strtotime('2011-11-04');
$edate = strtotime('2012-01-04');
$age = 0;

if($edate < $bdate) {
    //prenatal
    $age = -1;
} else {
    //born, count months.
    while($bdate < $edate) {
        $age++;
        $bdate = strtotime('+1 MONTH', $bdate);
        if ($bdate > $edate) {
            $age--;
        }
    }
}

This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters. Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters

In this article, we will see how to calculate the difference between 2 dates in PHP, along with understanding its implementation through the examples. Given two dates ie., start_date and end_date & we need to find the difference between the two dates.

Consider the below example:

Input: start_date: 2016-06-01 22:45:00 
       end_date: 2018-09-21 10:44:01
Output: 2 years, 3 months, 21 days, 11 hours, 59 minutes, 1 seconds
Explanation: The difference of 2 dates will give the date in complete format.

Method 1: Using date_diff() Function

This function is used to find the difference between two dates. This function will return a DateInterval object on the success and returns FALSE on failure.

Example: This example illustrates the use of the date_diff() function to calculate the difference between the 2 dates.

PHP

  $datetime1 = date_create('2016-06-01');

  $datetime2 = date_create('2018-09-21');

  $interval = date_diff($datetime1, $datetime2);

  echo $interval->format('%R%y years %m months');

?>

Output:

+2 years 3 months

Method 2: To use the date-time mathematical formula to find the difference between two dates. It returns the years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds between two specified dates.

Example: In this example, we will be using the date-time mathematical formula to calculate the difference between the dates that will be returned in years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds.

PHP

  $date1 = strtotime("2016-06-01 22:45:00");

  $date2 = strtotime("2018-09-21 10:44:01");

  $diff = abs($date2 - $date1);

  $years = floor($diff / (365*60*60*24));

  $months = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24)

                                 / (30*60*60*24));

  $days = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24 -

               $months*30*60*60*24)/ (60*60*24));

  $hours = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24

         - $months*30*60*60*24 - $days*60*60*24)

                                     / (60*60));

  $minutes = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24

           - $months*30*60*60*24 - $days*60*60*24

                            - $hours*60*60)/ 60);

  $seconds = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24

           - $months*30*60*60*24 - $days*60*60*24

                  - $hours*60*60 - $minutes*60));

  printf("%d years, %d months, %d days, %d hours, "

       . "%d minutes, %d seconds", $years, $months,

               $days, $hours, $minutes, $seconds);

?>

Output:

2 years, 3 months, 21 days, 11 hours, 59 minutes, 1 seconds

Method 3: This method is used to get the total number of days between two specified dates.

PHP

  $start_date = strtotime("2018-06-08");

  $end_date = strtotime("2018-09-19");

  echo "Difference between two dates: "

      . ($end_date - $start_date)/60/60/24;

?>

Output:

Difference between two dates: 103

PHP is a server-side scripting language designed specifically for web development. You can learn PHP from the ground up by following this PHP Tutorial and PHP Examples.