I have following
$var = "2010-01-21 00:00:00.0"
I'd like to compare this date against today's date (i.e. I'd like to know if this $var is before today or equals today or not)
What function would I need to use?
strtotime($var);
Turns it into a time value
time() - strtotime($var);
Gives you the seconds since $var
if((time()-(60*60*24)) < strtotime($var))
Will check if $var has been within the last day.
That format is perfectly appropriate for a standard string comparison e.g.
if ($date1 > $date2){
//Action
}
To get today's date in that format, simply use: date("Y-m-d H:i:s").
So:
$today = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
$date = "2010-01-21 00:00:00";
if ($date < $today) {}
That's the beauty of that format: it orders nicely. Of course, that may be less efficient, depending on your exact circumstances, but it might also be a whole lot more convenient and lead to more maintainable code - we'd need to know more to truly make that judgement call.
For the correct timezone, you can use, for example,
date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');
Click here to refer to the available PHP Timezones.