Question: I see there are other posts on this question in other languages, but I can't find one for PHP. I'm not looking for the difference between two date times, but rather how many days different. For example:

`2011-08-06 14:05:28`

and

`2011-08-07 08:46:28`

are less then one day apart, but I want a function that will tell me they are on days that are one day apart, i.e. will return a value of `1` for these two dates, and return a value of `2` for the following dates, for example:

`2011-08-06 23:05:28`

and

`2011-08-08 01:46:28`

Really, I'm guessing it must be easy, but I've not worked much with dates before.

Oh, and one more constraint, I need something compatible with PHP 5.2, so can't use `DateTime::diff`.

EDIT: changed to clarify that I do really need a numeric return value, sorry :)

Answer: 
if i interpret the question correctly, you need [GregorianToJD](http://php.net/manual/en/function.gregoriantojd.php) or mysql [to\_days](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_to-days)

Both functions return a [julian day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day) for a specific date, which is basically the number of days since "day 0".
```
  $date1 = "2011-08-06 14:05:28";
  $date2 = "2011-08-07 08:46:28";
  if(date("Ymd",strtotime($date1)) == date("Ymd",strtotime($date2)) {
      // they match

  } else {
      // calculate the difference
      $diff = ceil(abs(strtotime($date1)-strtotime($date2))/86400); 

  }

```