The translation of PHP DateTime comparison end date is:

Question

I'm trying to make a button disabled by comparing today's datetime to a due date in the database, but I'm having a problem. I have made the condition but it doesn't work on 1 day deadline, for example: 2023-07-31 00:00:00 vs. 2023-07-31 00:00:00.

Here is the code I tried:

// Variables
// $request_project->start_date (contains the startdate with datetime data type also user defined)
// $request_project->end_date (contains the deadline with datetime data type also user defined)
$startDate = new DateTime($request_project->start_date); //
$endDate = new DateTime($request_project->end_date);
$startDateTime = date('Y-m-d') . ' 00-00-00';
$endDateTime = date('Y-m-d') . ' 23-59-59';

$startDateString = $startDate->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$endDateString = $endDate->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

So I want to compare if the user defined due date is less than or equal to today's date time, if so the button will be active and have btn-primary class, otherwise the disabled attribute will be added and btn-primary will be changed to btn -secondary.

<?php if($endDateString <= $endDateTime) {?>
  <a href="#" class="btn btn-primary btn-hover w-100 mt-2"
  onclick="doSomething()">Apply Now <i class="uil uil-arrow-right"></i></a>
  <?php } else { ?>
   <a href="#" class="btn btn-secondary btn-hover w-100 mt-2 disabled"
    onclick="doSomething()">Apply Now <i class="uil uil-arrow-right">
   </i></a>
  <?php } ?>
   <a href="#" class="btn btn-soft-warning btn-hover w-100 mt-2
  bookmark" id="<?=$request_project->id?>"><i class="uil uil-bookmark">
  </i> Add Bookmark</a>

Instead of executing the else code block, it always executes the if code block, even if the end_date has expired.

Answer 1

The dilemma you're having seems to be related to how you compare the end date to the current date-time. The problem lies in the way you construct the $endDateTime variable using the date() function.

In your code, you use 'Y-m-d' as the format of date(), which means it only contains year, month and day, no time. You then concatenated '23-59-59' to the date, resulting in a wrong datetime format.

To resolve this issue, you should modify the $endDateTime variable to include the complete time (hours, minutes, and seconds) in the correct format before comparing. You can do this using the date() function in the format 'Y-m-d H:i:s', like this:

$endDateTime = date('Y-m-d 23:59:59');

Now, $endDateTime will have the correct format and your comparison should work as expected.

The following is the updated code:

<?php
$startDate = new DateTime($request_project->start_date);
$endDate = new DateTime($request_project->end_date);
$endDateTime = date('Y-m-d 23:59:59');
$startDateString = $startDate->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$endDateString = $endDate->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

if ($endDateString <= $endDateTime) {
    ?>
    <a href="#" class="btn btn-primary btn-hover w-100 mt-2" onclick="doSomething()">Apply Now <i
                class="uil uil-arrow-right"></i></a>
    <?php
} else {
    ?>
    <a href="#" class="btn btn-secondary btn-hover w-100 mt-2 disabled" onclick="doSomething()">Apply Now <i
                class="uil uil-arrow-right"></i></a>
    <?php
}
?>
<a href="#" class="btn btn-soft-warning btn-hover w-100 mt-2 bookmark"
   id="<?= $request_project->id ?>"><i class="uil uil-bookmark"></i> Add Bookmark</a>

With this adjustment, the code should now correctly disable the button when the end date is past today's date.