Display date range from 2 custom date-picker fields - wordpress

Question

I've created two custom datepicker fields with ACF (beginning_date and completion_date) and need to output/display these as a date range.
For example, if beginning_date Year and completion_date Year are equal, I need to output beginning_date day/month - completion day/month/year.
The display and return format these fields use is: l, F j, Y
I've searched everywhere! And tried to implement this: Create display date range from two dates in ACF in Wordpress
I also attempted to convert the fields to datetime objects but comparing these as dates seems to be the wrong way! I do not know where else I'm failing at...
I'm beginning again as nothing has worked so far, so I have no code to publish here because I ended up with a Frankenstein code snippet which I deleted and then came here for desperate help!

Answer 1

in your functions.php
function date_compare($id){
$start_date = get_field('beginning_date', $id);
$end_date = get_field('completion_date', $id);
$start_year = wp_date("Y", strtotime( $start_date ) );
$end_year = wp_date("Y", strtotime( $start_date ) );
$start_month = wp_date("n", strtotime( $start_date ) );
$end_month = wp_date("n", strtotime( $start_date ) );
$date_output = '';
$start_date_format = "l, F j, Y";
if( $start_date && $end_date ){
if( $start_year == $end_year && $start_month == $end_month ){
$start_date_format = "l j";
}
elseif( $start_year == $end_year){
$start_date_format = "l, F j";
}
}
if( $start_date ){
$date_output .= wp_date($start_date_format, strtotime( $start_date ) );
}
if( $end_date ){
$date_output .= ' - ' . wp_date("l, F j, Y", strtotime( $end_date ) );
}
return $date_output;
}
and in your theme:
echo date_compare($post->ID);