PHP5 - Date comparison issue

Hello, Am a PHP developer , am working a hotel application but the issus am having here maynot be so heard to achive but am stock here and i need your help here.
I have two table which are "blockedrooms" and "bookingstest"

blockedrooms has
blockedrooms (id, id_item, the_date, id_state, id_booking, roomno, hotel_id, entryCode, status, entryDate, blockedby, unblockedby, unblockedDate) VALUES
(16, 1, '2012-11-08', 4, 0, 100, '1', '20121109103253', 0, '2012-11-09 10:32:53', '2', '', '0000-00-00 00:00:00'),
(17, 1, '2012-11-09', 5, 0, 101, '1', '20121109103320', 0, '2012-11-09 10:33:20', '2', '', '0000-00-00 00:00:00'),

bookingstest has

INSERT INTO bookingstest (id, id_item, the_date, id_state, id_booking, roomno, hotel_id, entryCode, status, entryDate) VALUES

(18, 1, '2012-11-08', 5, 0, 101, '1', '20121109103320', 0, '2012-11-09 10:33:20'),
(20, 1, '2012-11-08', 4, 0, 100, '1', '20121109103253', 0, '2012-11-09 15:01:27'),
(21, 1, '2012-11-09', 4, 0, 100, '1', '20121109103253', 0, '2012-11-09 15:02:15'),
(22, 1, '2012-11-09', 5, 0, 101, '1', '20121109103320', 0, '2012-11-09 15:02:15'),
(23, 1, '2012-11-13', 4, 0, 100, '1', '20121109103253', 0, '2012-11-12 13:15:14'),
(24, 1, '2012-11-12', 5, 0, 101, '1', '20121109103320', 0, '2012-11-12 13:15:14'),
(25, 1, '2012-11-15', 4, 0, 100, '1', '20121109103253', 0, '2012-11-15 10:26:39'),
(26, 1, '2012-11-14', 5, 0, 101, '1', '20121109103320', 0, '2012-11-15 10:26:39');

I want to update a bookingstest, but i need to first get the dates that i already have in the bookingstest then compare it with my date range (This date range is the range of dates between a specified Startdate and Enddate) to avoid dupplication in bookingstest and the date range comparesion will start from *the_date* in blockedrooms till today. please how do i achive it i just want to get the dates that are not in bookingstest for each id_state from their start date (2012-11-08 and 2012-11-09) my code for that is below.


$rst=mysql_query("select * from blockedrooms where status=0 order by the_date asc") or die(mysql_error);
//$start = "2012-02-05";
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($rst,MYSQL_ASSOC)){

$start= $row['the_date'];
$end = date('Y-m-d');
$init_date = strtotime($start);
$dst_date = strtotime($end);

$offset = $dst_date-$init_date;

$dates = floor($offset/60/60/24) + 1;

for ($i = 0; $i < $dates; $i++)
{
$newdate = date("Y-m-d", mktime(12,0,0,date("m", strtotime($start)),
(date("d", strtotime($start)) + $i), date("Y", strtotime($start))));


//echo $rsts['the_date'];
//echo $newdate ."<br>";

$rsts=mysql_query(" select * from bookingstest where the_date IN ('$newdate') and entryCode=".$row['entryCode']." and roomno= ".$row['roomno']." order by roomno asc") or die(mysql_error);
while($rw = mysql_fetch_array($rsts,MYSQL_ASSOC)){
echo $rw['the_date']. ' - '.$rw['roomno']."<br>";

}

}



}

It might be easier to get the date range directly from mysql in your initial query with something like: