PHP ceil returning a float

Question

I've created a function to return the difference between two dates

<?php


class days {
    function dateDiff($start, $end) {
        $start_ts = strtotime($start);

        $end_ts = strtotime($end);

        $diff = $end_ts - $start_ts;

        $diff1 = ceil($diff / 86400);

        return $diff1;

    }
}

I have this code in the view :

<?php
$a    = new days();
$days = $a->dateDiff($v[17], date('Y/m/d'));
if ($days < 30) {
    $ds = $days;
    $tm = 'days';
} else {
    if ($days < 365) {
        $ds = $days / 30;
        $tm = 'months';
    } else {
        $ds = $days / 365;
        $tm = 'years';
    }
}

$v[17] is the date returned from the database to the view.

When I enter for instance an article in august 2011... It will display :

2.9666666666667 months ago

I ask myself ... How this Ceil method could not return an int value as it's supposed to do?

if that's normal, then what's the solution?

Thank you in advance :)

Answer 1

The ceil funciton works just fine when it returns the number of days.

But the problem is here:

if ($days<365){
   $ds=$days/30;
   $tm='months';
}

You didn't use ceil this time! You should try something like $ds = ceil($days / 30);.

Same thing for the number of years.

It would probably be more precise to use round instead of ceil, so that 32 days don't translate in 2 months:

$days = $a->dateDiff('10 oct 2011',date('Y/m/d'));

if ($days < 30) {
    $ds = $days;
    $tm = 'day';
}
else {
    if ($days < 365){
        $ds = round($days / 30);
        $tm = 'month';
    }
    else {
        $ds = round($days / 365);
        $tm = 'year';
    }
}

if ($ds > 1) {
    $tm .= 's';
}

echo "$ds $tm"; # => 1 month; or 2 months using ceil function