前段时间，我编写了一个format_date函数，因为它提供了许多关于日期的选项：

function format_date($date, $type, $seperator="-")
{
    if($date)
    {
        $day = date("j", strtotime($date));
        $month = date("n", strtotime($date));
        $year = date("Y", strtotime($date));
        $hour = date("H", strtotime($date));
        $min = date("i", strtotime($date));
        $sec = date("s", strtotime($date));

        switch($type)
        {
            case 0:  $date = date("Y".$seperator."m".$seperator."d",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 1:  $date = date("D, F j, Y",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 2:  $date = date("d".$seperator."m".$seperator."Y",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 3:  $date = date("d".$seperator."M".$seperator."Y",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 4:  $date = date("d".$seperator."M".$seperator."Y h:i A",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 5:  $date = date("m".$seperator."d".$seperator."Y",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 6:  $date = date("M",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 7:  $date = date("Y",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 8:  $date = date("j",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 9:  $date = date("n",mktime($hour, $min, $sec, $month, $day, $year)); break;
            case 10: 
                     $diff = abs(strtotime($date) - strtotime(date("Y-m-d h:i:s"))); 
                     $years = floor($diff / (365*60*60*24));
                     $months = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24) / (30*60*60*24));
                     $days = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24 - $months*30*60*60*24)/ (60*60*24));
                     $date = $years . " years, " . $months . " months, " . $days . "days";
        }
    }
    return($date);
}    

对于遗留代码（PHP＜5.3）使用此选项。有关最新的解决方案，请参阅下面jurka的答案

您可以使用strtotime（）将两个日期转换为unix时间，然后计算它们之间的秒数。由此很容易计算出不同的时间段。

$date1 = "2007-03-24";
$date2 = "2009-06-26";

$diff = abs(strtotime($date2) - strtotime($date1));

$years = floor($diff / (365*60*60*24));
$months = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24) / (30*60*60*24));
$days = floor(($diff - $years * 365*60*60*24 - $months*30*60*60*24)/ (60*60*24));

printf("%d years, %d months, %d days\n", $years, $months, $days);

编辑：显然，尤尔卡在下面描述了这样做的首选方式。如果您没有PHP5.3或更高版本，通常只建议使用我的代码。

评论中的一些人指出，上面的代码只是一个近似值。我仍然认为，对于大多数目的来说，这是很好的，因为范围的使用更多地是为了提供时间流逝或剩余时间的感觉，而不是为了提供精度-如果你想这样做，只需输出日期。

尽管如此，我还是决定解决这些投诉。如果您确实需要一个精确的范围，但还没有访问PHP 5.3，请使用下面的代码（它也可以在PHP 4中使用）。这是PHP内部用于计算范围的代码的直接端口，但不考虑夏时制。这意味着它最多休息一个小时，但除此之外，它应该是正确的。

<?php

/**
 * Calculate differences between two dates with precise semantics. Based on PHPs DateTime::diff()
 * implementation by Derick Rethans. Ported to PHP by Emil H, 2011-05-02. No rights reserved.
 * 
 * See here for original code:
 * http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/trunk/ext/date/lib/tm2unixtime.c?revision=302890&view=markup
 * http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/trunk/ext/date/lib/interval.c?revision=298973&view=markup
 */

function _date_range_limit($start, $end, $adj, $a, $b, $result)
{
    if ($result[$a] < $start) {
        $result[$b] -= intval(($start - $result[$a] - 1) / $adj) + 1;
        $result[$a] += $adj * intval(($start - $result[$a] - 1) / $adj + 1);
    }

    if ($result[$a] >= $end) {
        $result[$b] += intval($result[$a] / $adj);
        $result[$a] -= $adj * intval($result[$a] / $adj);
    }

    return $result;
}

function _date_range_limit_days($base, $result)
{
    $days_in_month_leap = array(31, 31, 29, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31);
    $days_in_month = array(31, 31, 28, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31);

    _date_range_limit(1, 13, 12, "m", "y", &$base);

    $year = $base["y"];
    $month = $base["m"];

    if (!$result["invert"]) {
        while ($result["d"] < 0) {
            $month--;
            if ($month < 1) {
                $month += 12;
                $year--;
            }

            $leapyear = $year % 400 == 0 || ($year % 100 != 0 && $year % 4 == 0);
            $days = $leapyear ? $days_in_month_leap[$month] : $days_in_month[$month];

            $result["d"] += $days;
            $result["m"]--;
        }
    } else {
        while ($result["d"] < 0) {
            $leapyear = $year % 400 == 0 || ($year % 100 != 0 && $year % 4 == 0);
            $days = $leapyear ? $days_in_month_leap[$month] : $days_in_month[$month];

            $result["d"] += $days;
            $result["m"]--;

            $month++;
            if ($month > 12) {
                $month -= 12;
                $year++;
            }
        }
    }

    return $result;
}

function _date_normalize($base, $result)
{
    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 60, 60, "s", "i", $result);
    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 60, 60, "i", "h", $result);
    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 24, 24, "h", "d", $result);
    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 12, 12, "m", "y", $result);

    $result = _date_range_limit_days(&$base, &$result);

    $result = _date_range_limit(0, 12, 12, "m", "y", $result);

    return $result;
}

/**
 * Accepts two unix timestamps.
 */
function _date_diff($one, $two)
{
    $invert = false;
    if ($one > $two) {
        list($one, $two) = array($two, $one);
        $invert = true;
    }

    $key = array("y", "m", "d", "h", "i", "s");
    $a = array_combine($key, array_map("intval", explode(" ", date("Y m d H i s", $one))));
    $b = array_combine($key, array_map("intval", explode(" ", date("Y m d H i s", $two))));

    $result = array();
    $result["y"] = $b["y"] - $a["y"];
    $result["m"] = $b["m"] - $a["m"];
    $result["d"] = $b["d"] - $a["d"];
    $result["h"] = $b["h"] - $a["h"];
    $result["i"] = $b["i"] - $a["i"];
    $result["s"] = $b["s"] - $a["s"];
    $result["invert"] = $invert ? 1 : 0;
    $result["days"] = intval(abs(($one - $two)/86400));

    if ($invert) {
        _date_normalize(&$a, &$result);
    } else {
        _date_normalize(&$b, &$result);
    }

    return $result;
}

$date = "1986-11-10 19:37:22";

print_r(_date_diff(strtotime($date), time()));
print_r(_date_diff(time(), strtotime($date)));

当PHP 5.3（分别为date_diff（））不可用时，我使用了我编写的以下函数：

        function dateDifference($startDate, $endDate)
        {
            $startDate = strtotime($startDate);
            $endDate = strtotime($endDate);
            if ($startDate === false || $startDate < 0 || $endDate === false || $endDate < 0 || $startDate > $endDate)
                return false;

            $years = date('Y', $endDate) - date('Y', $startDate);

            $endMonth = date('m', $endDate);
            $startMonth = date('m', $startDate);

            // Calculate months
            $months = $endMonth - $startMonth;
            if ($months <= 0)  {
                $months += 12;
                $years--;
            }
            if ($years < 0)
                return false;

            // Calculate the days
            $measure = ($months == 1) ? 'month' : 'months';
            $days = $endDate - strtotime('+' . $months . ' ' . $measure, $startDate);
            $days = date('z', $days);   

            return array($years, $months, $days);
        }

非常简单：

    <?php
        $date1 = date_create("2007-03-24");
        echo "Start date: ".$date1->format("Y-m-d")."<br>";
        $date2 = date_create("2009-06-26");
        echo "End date: ".$date2->format("Y-m-d")."<br>";
        $diff = date_diff($date1,$date2);
        echo "Difference between start date and end date: ".$diff->format("%y years, %m months and %d days")."<br>";
    ?>

有关详细信息，请查看以下链接：

PHP:date_diff-手动

注意，它适用于PHP 5.3.0或更高版本。

我不知道你是否在使用PHP框架，但很多PHP框架都有日期/时间库和助手来帮助你避免重新发明轮子。

例如，CodeIgniter具有timespan（）函数。只需输入两个Unix时间戳，就会自动生成如下结果：

1 Year, 10 Months, 2 Weeks, 5 Days, 10 Hours, 16 Minutes

http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/helpers/date_helper.html

使用date_diff（）尝试这个非常简单的答案，这是经过测试的。

$date1 = date_create("2017-11-27");
$date2 = date_create("2018-12-29");
$diff=date_diff($date1,$date2);
$months = $diff->format("%m months");
$years = $diff->format("%y years");
$days = $diff->format("%d days");

echo $years .' '.$months.' '.$days;

输出为：

1 years 1 months 2 days