Should I store the result of an function into an array?

Question

I have a function like this:

function time_elapsed_string($ptime)
{
            $date_time = strtotime(\"1348-10-10 04:30:01\") + $ptime;
            $year = dat         


        

Answer 1

This is a no brainer.

Yes - store the function call result of time_elapsed_string($ptime) in an array, then use that to access your results. You're wasting CPU cycles otherwise!

// call it once
$result = time_elapsed_string($ptime);

// then use:
$result['date'];
$result['time'];
$result['difference'];

Answer 2

Counting time elapsed since some date/time like this is mauvais ton.

DateTime has been available since PHP 5.2.0 and tonns of people underestimate it. Why don't you use this instead of loops and ifs?

$create_time = "2016-08-02 12:35:04";
$current_time="2016-08-02 16:16:02";

$dtCurrent = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $current_time);
// to use current timestamp, use the following:
//$dtCurrent = new DateTime();
$dtCreate = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $create_time);
$diff = $dtCurrent->diff($dtCreate);

Now, you can format the result however you want:

$interval = $diff->format("%h hours %i minutes %s seconds");

This will give a clean 3 hours 40 minutes 58 seconds without any arrays, which is better.

UPDATE

There is a general solution to get hours / minutes / seconds via regex:

$interval = $diff->format("%y years %m months %d days %h hours %i minutes %s seconds");

// now remove zero values
$interval = preg_replace('/(^0| 0) (years|months|days|hours|minutes|seconds)/', '', $interval);

UPDATE 2

As of your comment:

Look, I want to use your approach .. but I really cannot implement it .. Actually I need three things: time, date, difference ..! But your approach doesn't give me them..

Well, we already know how to get the difference, it's the $interval variable described above.

To get time and date, you can get it from the $dtCreate variable by, again, using format:

$time = $dtCreate->format('H:i:s');
$date = $dtCreate->format('d-m-Y');