post expire after x days

Question

I want to create a code snippet for expiration of post after x days from the post published date, I tried with this code but I always displays the true condition, what am I doing wrong?

$pfx_date       = get_the_date('d/m/Y');
$datacorrente   = date('d/m/Y', strtotime("-5 days"));

if ( $pfx_date <= $datacorrente ) { 
    echo 'post expired'; 
} else { 
    echo 'post open'; 
}

"-5 days" is the x days variable after the post is expired.

Answer 1

You're comparing strings. For dates this will only ever work out if you use a yyyymmdd format or similar.

Answer 2

Up-voting Andy's answer, you should be comparing integers to get this working. strtotime() can turn any string to the time integer, which will be compared later to tell the difference and how many seconds passed until now ( time() ). Something like follows:

$expired = ( ( time() - strtotime(get_the_date('Y-m-d H:i:s')) ) / DAY_IN_SECONDS ) >= 5;
if ( $expired ) { 
    echo 'post expired'; 
} else { 
    echo 'post open'; 
}

Hope that helps.