What are the potential pitfalls of comparing dates in PHP without converting them to timestamps?

Comparing dates in PHP without converting them to timestamps can lead to unexpected results due to differences in date formats, time zones, and daylight saving time adjustments. To ensure accurate date comparisons, it is recommended to convert the dates to timestamps using the strtotime() function before comparing them. 

$date1 = '2022-01-15';
$date2 = '2022-01-20';

$timestamp1 = strtotime($date1);
$timestamp2 = strtotime($date2);

if ($timestamp1 < $timestamp2) {
    echo "$date1 is before $date2";
} elseif ($timestamp1 > $timestamp2) {
    echo "$date1 is after $date2";
} else {
    echo "$date1 is the same as $date2";
}

Keywords

dates PHP timestamps comparison pitfalls

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