PHP - Compare date to string regardless of timezone

Question

I have a card expiry info passed to me as:

$date = '2014-12-22';
$hour = '19';
$minute = '30';

and I need to figure out if access can be granted based on the door location's current date and time each of which is in different timezone. The script that checks this is generated hourly and distributed to access servers which needs to deduce if the door's local time is before the expiry time (the whole design is rather convoluted and rather poorly designed).

I need to compare the bellow $door_datetime to the card expiry info (date, hour, minute)

$door_datetime = new DateTime;
$door_datetime->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone($door_timezone));

An added issue is that the db data is not being actively cleaned up and there are millions of card expiry date, hour, minute to compare to the $door_datetime; and as you can imagine at busy time that becomes an issue as the server slows down.

Any ideas on how to efficiently find out if the $door_datetime is before or after the $date, $hour, $time?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 23 '14 at 00:52

1

DateTime objects are comparable so it should be as simple as:

$now = new DateTime(null, new DateTimeZone($door_timezone));
$card_expires = new DateTime(sprintf('%s %s:%s:00', $date, $hour, $minute), new DateTimeZone($door_timezone));
if ($card_expires <  $now) {
    // expired
}

answered Dec 23 '14 at 00:52

John Conde

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Thank you, that worked. I assume that DateTime objects are fairly lightweight when it comes to server resources. – Kate Dec 23 '14 at 01:11
Strange, I couldn't get it to work. Must be me; *yeah, it's me*. lol am sure it works though John ;-) am just getting an exception. – Funk Forty Niner Dec 23 '14 at 01:11
I am too now that I test it. But I don't see the error. – John Conde Dec 23 '14 at 01:20
Mine is similar [and blows up too](http://codepad.viper-7.com/mKRx9H). If I remove the TZ it works. – John Conde Dec 23 '14 at 01:23
Nevermind, had called `new DateTimeZone()` twice for each timezone. [It works now](http://codepad.viper-7.com/gAgd0K) – John Conde Dec 23 '14 at 01:29
Hm, yeah. Saw that. Oh well, OP accepted it; that's the important thing ;-) – Funk Forty Niner Dec 23 '14 at 01:30
They figured it out before we did :) – John Conde Dec 23 '14 at 01:32

PHP - Compare date to string regardless of timezone

1 Answers1