Member Avatar for turt2live

Hello,


What I am trying to do is restrict access to something if 48 hours hasn't passed since the last access.

I have a MySQL table with the last access time (col name: lastAccess).

If they are within the 48hours, deny access and tell them how many hours and minutes until they can access it again, otherwise, let them through,

Here is my not-working code.

$q = mysql_query("SELECT lastAccess FROM access");
$a = mysql_fetch_array($q);
$access = $a['lastAccess'];
if(strtotime("+48 hours", $access) >= time()){
	echo "Access Granted";
}else{
	echo "No Access! You have __ hours and __ minutes left.";
}

Thank you in advance for your help.

-- Turt2Live

Edited by turt2live because: Mistype
  • 2 Contributors
  • 3 Replies
  • 187 Views
  • 8 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by burgercho

Dani AI

Generated

Good start and nice direction from . A clearer, more robust approach is to convert the database value into a PHP DateTime, add a 48‑hour DateInterval, then compare to now. That avoids format and timezone surprises and makes it trivial to compute the remaining hours and minutes.

/* $row['lastAccess'] fetched from the database (DATETIME like "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" or an integer epoch) */
$raw = $row['lastAccess'];

if (ctype_digit($raw)) {
    $last = new DateTime('@' . $raw);               // epoch -> UTC
    $last->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
} else {
    $last = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $raw, new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
    if ($last === false) {                          // fallback if format differs
        $last = new DateTime($raw, new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
    }
}

$unlock = clone $last;
$unlock->add(new DateInterval('PT48H'));

$now = new DateTime('now', new DateTimeZone('UTC'));

if ($now >= $unlock) {
    echo 'Access Granted';
} else {
    $diff = $now->diff($unlock);
    $hours   = $diff->days * 24 + $diff->h;
    $minutes = $diff->i;
    printf('No Access! %d hours and %d minutes left.', $hours, $minutes);
}

Notes and troubleshooting

  • Keep DB times and PHP comparisons in the same timezone (UTC recommended).
  • Handle null or missing lastAccess (treat as never accessed).
  • Prefer PDO or mysqli with prepared statements instead of deprecated mysql_* calls.
  • Update lastAccess only after a successful grant and consider atomic updates or transactions to avoid race conditions when requests occur concurrently.

Recommended Answers

All 3 Replies

Member Avatar for burgercho

MySQL returns dates and times in a different format than PHP, which uses timestamps. Use the MySQL function UNIX_TIMESTAMP to convert it in your query.

$q = mysql_query("SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP(lastAccess) FROM access");
Member Avatar for turt2live

Alright, and how would I determine the hours and minutes until the lock is over?

Member Avatar for burgercho

The rest of the code looked good for that, except the name of the array element would be UNIX_TIMESTAMP(lastAccess) so:

$access = $a['UNIX_TIMESTAMP(lastAccess)'];
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