Determining the Hour Discrepancy Between Dates in PHP

When dealing with two dates expressed in the "Y-m-d H:i:s" format, determining the hour difference between them is a common requirement. This article addresses this issue, explaining how to calculate the hour discrepancy effectively.

For PHP, one approach involves converting the dates into timestamps and then performing a calculation. Specifically, you can use the strtotime() function to obtain the timestamp for each date and subsequently subtract them. The resulting value represents the difference in seconds. To express the difference in hours, divide the result by 3600, as there are 3600 seconds in an hour.

Here's a concise code snippet that demonstrates this approach:

$hourdiff = round((strtotime($time1) - strtotime($time2)) / 3600, 1);

By employing the round() function, you can avoid having excessive decimal places in the final result. This method provides a straightforward way to determine the hour difference between two dates in PHP.