Find difference between two datetimes and format at Y-m-d H:i:s

I’m trying to get the difference between two datetimes and return it as a datetime. I’ve found examples using diff but I can’t seem to get it right.

$timein = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
$timeout = date("Y-m-d 20:00:00");
$totaltime = $timein->diff($timeout);

However $totaltime logs 0000-00-00 00:00:00 to my DB. Is this because I’m not formatting my totaltime variable?

Answer

I’m not sure what format you’re looking for in your difference but here’s how to do it using DateTime

$datetime1 = new DateTime();
$datetime2 = new DateTime('2011-01-03 17:13:00');
$interval = $datetime1->diff($datetime2);
$elapsed = $interval->format('%y years %m months %a days %h hours %i minutes %s seconds');
echo $elapsed;