MySql difference between two timestamps in days?

I know is quite old, but I'll say just for the sake of it - I was looking for the same problem and got here, but I needed the difference in days.

I used SELECT (UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE1) - UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE2))/60/60/24 Unix_timestamp returns the difference in seconds, and then I just divide into minutes(seconds/60), hours(minutes/60), days(hours/24).

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 |
+------+