PHP Checking if the current date is before or after a set date

Question

Im pulling a date from a database which is formatted like dd-mm-YYYY.

What I want to do is check the current date;

• if the current date is before the date com

Answer 1

Here's a list of all possible checks for …

"Did a date pass?"

Possible ways to obtain the value

$date = strtotime( $date );

$date > date( "U" )
$date > mktime( 0, 0, 0 )
$date > strtotime( 'now' )
$date > time()
$date > abs( intval( $_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME'] ) )

Performance Test Result (PHP 5.4.7)

I did some performance test on 1.000.000 iterations and calculated the average – Ordered fastest to slowest.

+---------------------+---------------+
|        method       |     time      |
+---------------------+---------------+
|        time()       | 0.0000006732  |
|       $_SERVER      | 0.0000009131  |
|      date("U")      | 0.0000028951  |
|     mktime(0,0,0)   | 0.000003906   |
|   strtotime("now")  | 0.0000045032  |
| new DateTime("now") | 0.0000053365  |
+---------------------+---------------+

ProTip: You can easily remember what's fastest by simply looking at the length of the function. The longer, the slower the function is.

Performance Test Setup

The following loop was run for each of the above mentioned possibilities. I converted the values to non-scientific notation for easier readability.

$loops = 1000000;
$start = microtime( true );
for ( $i = 0; $i < $loops; $i++ )
    date( "U" );
printf(
    '|    date("U")     | %s  |'."\n",
    rtrim( sprintf( '%.10F', ( microtime( true ) - $start ) / $loops ), '0' )
);

Conclusion

time() still seems to be the fastest.