MySql difference between two timestamps in days?

Question

How can I get the difference between two timestamps in days? Should I be using a datetime column for this?

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I switched my column to datetime. Simple subtraction doesn\'t

Answer 1

I know is quite old, but I'll say just for the sake of it - I was looking for the same problem and got here, but I needed the difference in days.

I used SELECT (UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE1) - UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE2))/60/60/24 Unix_timestamp returns the difference in seconds, and then I just divide into minutes(seconds/60), hours(minutes/60), days(hours/24).

Answer 2

CREATE TABLE t (d1 timestamp, d2 timestamp);

INSERT INTO t VALUES ('2010-03-11 12:00:00', '2010-03-30 05:00:00');
INSERT INTO t VALUES ('2010-03-11 12:00:00', '2010-03-30 13:00:00');
INSERT INTO t VALUES ('2010-03-11 00:00:00', '2010-03-30 13:00:00');
INSERT INTO t VALUES ('2010-03-10 12:00:00', '2010-03-30 13:00:00');
INSERT INTO t VALUES ('2010-03-10 12:00:00', '2010-04-01 13:00:00');

SELECT d2, d1, DATEDIFF(d2, d1) AS diff FROM t;

+---------------------+---------------------+------+
| d2                  | d1                  | diff |
+---------------------+---------------------+------+
| 2010-03-30 05:00:00 | 2010-03-11 12:00:00 |   19 |
| 2010-03-30 13:00:00 | 2010-03-11 12:00:00 |   19 |
| 2010-03-30 13:00:00 | 2010-03-11 00:00:00 |   19 |
| 2010-03-30 13:00:00 | 2010-03-10 12:00:00 |   20 |
| 2010-04-01 13:00:00 | 2010-03-10 12:00:00 |   22 |
+---------------------+---------------------+------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Answer 3

If you need the difference in days accounting up to the second:

SELECT TIMESTAMPDIFF(SECOND,'2010-09-21 21:40:36','2010-10-08 18:23:13')/86400 AS diff

It will return
diff
16.8629

Answer 4

SELECT DATEDIFF( now(), '2013-06-20' );

here datediff takes two arguments 'upto-date', 'from-date'

What i have done is, using now() function, i can get no. of days since 20-june-2013 till today.

Answer 5

If you want to return in full TIMESTAMP format than try it: -

 SELECT TIMEDIFF(`call_end_time`, `call_start_time`) as diff from tablename;

return like

     diff
     - - -
    00:05:15

Answer 6

SELECT DATEDIFF(max_date, min_date) as days from my table. This works even if the col max_date and min_date are in string data types.