datetime - MySql difference between two timestamps in days?

Question

How can I get the difference between two timestamps in days? Should I be using a datetime column for this?

---

I switched my column to datetime. Simple subtraction doesn't seem to give me a result in days.

mysql> SELECT NOW(), last_confirmation_attempt, NOW() - last_confirmation_attempt AS diff  FROM DateClubs HAVING diff IS NOT NULL ;
+---------------------+---------------------------+-----------------+
| NOW()               | last_confirmation_attempt | diff            |
+---------------------+---------------------------+-----------------+
| 2010-03-30 10:52:31 | 2010-03-16 10:41:47       | 14001084.000000 |
+---------------------+---------------------------+-----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

I don't think diff is in seconds, because when I divide diff by number of seconds in a day ( 86,400 ), I don't get a sensical answer:

mysql> SELECT NOW(), last_confirmation_attempt, ( NOW() - last_confirmation_attempt) / 86400 AS diff  FROM DateClubs HAVING diff IS NOT NULL ;
+---------------------+---------------------------+----------------+
| NOW()               | last_confirmation_attempt | diff           |
+---------------------+---------------------------+----------------+
| 2010-03-30 10:58:58 | 2010-03-16 10:41:47       | 162.0568402778 |
+---------------------+---------------------------+----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Answer 1

If you're happy to ignore the time portion in the columns, DATEDIFF() will give you the difference you're looking for in days.

SELECT DATEDIFF('2010-10-08 18:23:13', '2010-09-21 21:40:36') AS days;
+------+
| days |
+------+
|   17 |
+------+