比较smarty中的两个日期

I have two dates in respective format (02-Dec-14 and 17-Dec-14 ) and i want to compare these two dates in smarty.

How can i compare these two dates ? please help.

Thanks In Advance

If you have those dates assigned to Smarty for example this way:

$smarty->assign('date2','02-Dec-14');
$smarty->assign('date1','17-Dec-14');

you can use strtotime function directly in Smarty, for example:

{if $date1|strtotime < $date2|strtotime}
    {$date1} is earlier than {$date2}
{elseif $date1|strtotime == $date2|strtotime}
    Both dates are the same
{else}
    {$date2} is earlier than {$date1}
{/if}

<?php
$d = '02-Dec-14';
$e = '17-Dec-14';
$t1 = strtotime($d);
$t2 = strtotime($e);
/*  
// Test if it works.
if ($t2 > $t1) {
    echo 'second is greater';
}
*/

You can then assign it to Smarty:

$this->assign('date_one', $t1);
$this->assign('date_two', $t2);

And in Smarty, you can compare:

{if $date_one < $date_rwo}
   ...do something..
{/if}

{if {$date1|date_format:"%y%m%d"} lt {$date2|date_format:"%y%m%d"}}

I Tried many ways, could not get the solution. finally I tried something like this: In PHP passing 2 variables something like this to smarty:

$insuranceStartDate= date("jS F Y", strtotime($startdate));
$smarty->assign('insuranceStartDate' , $insuranceStartDate);
$insuranceStartDatePlain= date("Y/m/d", strtotime($startdate));
$smarty->assign('insuranceStartDatePlain' , $insuranceStartDatePlain);

In smarty comparing like below:

{if $insuranceStartDatePlain|date_format:'%Y/%m/%d' < '2017/09/01'} 
less than -  1<sup>st</sup> Septemeber 2017
{else}
greater  - {$insuranceStartDate}
{/if}

Note:to compare dates when they are strings, use order YYYY/MM/DD in smarty

Hope it helps someone in future :)