Question:

I have a PHP script that collects a timestamp in a database in the HH:MM:SS format. I then have a PHP page that is refreshed every second via AJAX, the goal of which is to produce a script that pulls PHP data every second so I can do things like display a countdown timer. I am trying to display the difference in two times in this format: HH:MM:SS. IE:

$currentstampedtime = date("H:i:s", strtotime("now"));

Produces:

19:29:34

(and counts up with my ajax script correctly, appears as a clock.

$gametimestamp = date("H:i:s", strtotime($gametime));

Produces:

19:19:12

By pulling the timestamp from my DB, stored in $gametime.

What I am trying to do is get the difference between these two echo'ed out in real time like a countdown timer, assuming the ajax refreshes the page every second like it appears to be doing.

$difference = ($currentstampedtime - $gametimestamp);

Does nothing. When I echo the var,

echo $difference;

I get

1

Nothing I have tried is working. Please help. Thanks in advance.

You could use php <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php" rel="nofollow">DateTime</a> object to create your current time and target time. Then, use the <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.diff.php" rel="nofollow">diff()</a> function of the DateTime object to get the difference and format it as "00:00:00".

i.e. :

$now = new DateTime(); $target = DateTime::createFromFormat('H:i:s', "01:30:00"); $difference = $now->diff($target); echo $difference->format("%H:%I:%S");

Output :

<blockquote>

00:57:48

</blockquote>

Hope it helps.

Here is your answer:

<?php $difference = time()-strtotime($gametime); // You can retrieve the difference as time echo $currentstampedtime = date("H:i:s", $difference); ?>

<strong>UPDATE</strong>

Another solution

<?php function get_time_difference($time1, $time2) { $time1 = strtotime("1980-01-01 $time1"); $time2 = strtotime("1980-01-01 $time2"); if ($time2 < $time1) { $time2 += 86400; } return date("H:i:s", strtotime("1980-01-01 00:00:00") + ($time2 - $time1)); } echo get_time_difference("10:25:30", "22:40:59"); // 12:15:29 ?>