How Can I Reliably Calculate Age in PHP?

PHP Calculate Age: An Improved and Reliable Approach

Calculating the age of a person based on their date of birth (DOB) is a common task in PHP. While there are various methods available, some may encounter unexpected issues or produce inaccurate results. This article presents a more reliable and efficient approach to age calculation.

One potential challenge with the provided while loop is that it can lead to an infinite loop under certain conditions. To avoid this, a more robust solution is to use the floor() function to calculate the age based on the difference between the current time and the DOB.

The following PHP code snippet provides an improved way to calculate age:

<?php
  //date in mm/dd/yyyy format; or it can be in other formats as well
  $birthDate = "12/17/1983";
  //explode the date to get month, day and year
  $birthDate = explode("/", $birthDate);
  //get age from date or birthdate
  $age = (date("md", date("U", mktime(0, 0, 0, $birthDate[0], $birthDate[1], $birthDate[2]))) > date("md")
    ? ((date("Y") - $birthDate[2]) - 1)
    : (date("Y") - $birthDate[2]));
  echo "Age is:" . $age;
?>

This approach uses the mktime() function to convert the DOB to a timestamp, which is then used to calculate the difference between the current time and the DOB. The date() function is used to format the age as a string.

This improved method is more reliable and efficient than the provided code, and it eliminates the potential for infinite loops or incorrect age calculations.

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