Work out the days between two dates using PHP

I've popped this up as I needed to work out the number of dates in between two dates. Again something similar might be out there, but I thought it may be useful for any one out there that may need it.

Parameters

Required - date1 and date2: Dates in the following format yyyy-mm-dd
Optional - inclusive: If you set to true it includes the two provided dates in it's calculation
Optional - return format of the dates: Combination of PHP's date formatting options

Return Values

Returns an array of dates and the number of days

The Code

/**
    * Get the difference between two dates...
    * @param string $date1 yyyy-mm-dd
    * @param string $date2 yyyy-mm-dd
    * @param boolean $inclusive
    * @param string $return format
    *
    * @return array of total number of days and the dates in the prescribed format
*/

function days_between($date1, $date2, $inclusive = true, $return_format = 'Y-m-d') {
       
        $date_array = array();
        $output_array = array();
       
        $date1_ts = strtotime($date1);
        $date2_ts = strtotime($date2);
        $second_difference = $date2_ts-$date1_ts;
        $num_days = floor($second_difference / 86400);
     
        if (is_numeric($num_days) && $num_days > 0) {
         
            for ($i = 0; $i <= $num_days; $i++) {
                $new_day = $date1_ts + ($i*86400);
                $date_array[] = date($return_format,$new_day);
            }

            if (!$inclusive) {
                unset($date_array[0]);
                array_pop($date_array);
            }
         
            $output_array['number_of_days'] = sizeof($date_array);
            $output_array['dates_between'] = $date_array;  
         
        }

        return ($output_array);
     
}    

Usage

days_between('2011-12-31', '2012-01-05', 1,'d M Y');

Stop your website copyright information going out of date

If you like your copyright information at the bottom of your website to update itself, do not hard code the date in to the page, use PHP to do it for you.

<?php>
echo '&copy;'.date('Y');
?>

That should be more than accurate, but you could always add in the month if you want as well:

<?php>
echo '&copy;'.date('F Y');
?>

Hope this helps...