PHP Date Function

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date

The PHP date() function is used to format a time or a date.date — Format a local time/date

Description

string date ( string format [, int timestamp])

Returns a string formatted according to the given format string using the given integer timestamp or the current local time if no timestamp is given. In otherwords, timestamp is optional and defaults to the value of time().

Note: The valid range of a timestamp is typically from Fri, 13 Dec 1901 20:45:54 GMT to Tue, 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 GMT. (These are the dates that correspond to the minimum and maximum values for a 32-bit signed integer). On Windows this range is limited from 01-01-1970 to 19-01-2038.

Note: To generate a timestamp from a string representation of the date, you may be able to use strtotime(). Additionally, some databases have functions to convert their date formats into timestamps (such as MySQL’s UNIX_TIMESTAMP function).

Table 1. The following characters are recognized in the format parameter string

format character Description Example returned values
a Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem am or pm
A Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem AM or PM
B Swatch Internet time 000 through 999
c ISO 8601 date (added in PHP 5) 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00
d Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros 01 to 31
D A textual representation of a day, three letters Mon through Sun
F A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March January through December
g 12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros 1 through 12
G 24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros 0 through 23
h 12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros 01 through 12
H 24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros 00 through 23
i Minutes with leading zeros 00 to 59
I (capital i) Whether or not the date is in daylights savings time 1 if Daylight Savings Time, 0 otherwise.
j Day of the month without leading zeros 1 to 31
l (lowercase ‘L’) A full textual representation of the day of the week Sunday through Saturday
L Whether it’s a leap year 1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise.
m Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros 01 through 12
M A short textual representation of a month, three letters Jan through Dec
n Numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros 1 through 12
O Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours Example: +0200
r RFC 2822 formatted date Example: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200
s Seconds, with leading zeros 00 through 59
S English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j
t Number of days in the given month 28 through 31
T Timezone setting of this machine Examples: EST, MDT …
U Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) See also time()
w Numeric representation of the day of the week 0 (for Sunday) through 6 (for Saturday)
W ISO-8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday (added in PHP 4.1.0) Example: 42 (the 42nd week in the year)
Y A full numeric representation of a year, 4 digits Examples: 1999 or 2003
y A two digit representation of a year Examples: 99 or 03
z The day of the year (starting from 0) 0 through 365
Z Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is always negative, and for those east of UTC is always positive. -43200 through 43200

Unrecognized characters in the format string will be printed as-is. The Z format will always return 0 when using gmdate().

Example 1. date() examples

<?php
// Prints something like: Wednesday
echo date("l");

// Prints something like: Wednesday 15th of January 2003 05:51:38 AM
echo date("l dS of F Y h:i:s A");

// Prints: July 1, 2000 is on a Saturday
echo "July 1, 2000 is on a " . date("l", mktime(0, 0, 0, 7, 1, 2000));
?>

You can prevent a recognized character in the format string from being expanded by escaping it with a preceding backslash. If the character with a backslash is already a special sequence, you may need to also escape the backslash.

Example 2. Escaping characters in date()

<?php
// prints something like: Wednesday the 15th
echo date("l \the jS");
?>

It is possible to use date() and mktime() together to find dates in the future or the past.

Example 3. date() and mktime() example

<?php
$tomorrow = mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m")  , date("d")+1, date("Y"));
$lastmonth = mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m")-1, date("d"), date("Y"));
$nextyear = mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m"), date("d"), date("Y")+1);
?>

Note: This can be more reliable than simply adding or subtracting the number of seconds in a day or month to a timestamp because of daylight savings time.

Some examples of date() formatting. Note that you should escape any other characters, as any which currently have a special meaning will produce undesirable results, and other characters may be assigned meaning in future PHP versions. When escaping, be sure to use single quotes to prevent characters like n from becoming newlines.

Example 4. date() Formatting

<?php
// Assuming today is: March 10th, 2001, 5:16:18 pm

$today = date("F j, Y, g:i a"); // March 10, 2001, 5:16 pm
$today = date("m.d.y"); // 03.10.01
$today = date("j, n, Y"); // 10, 3, 2001
$today = date("Ymd"); // 20010310
$today = date('h-i-s, j-m-y, it is w Day z '); // 05-16-17, 10-03-01, 1631 1618 6 Fripm01
$today = date('it is the jS day.'); // It is the 10th day.
$today = date("D M j G:i:s T Y"); // Sat Mar 10 15:16:08 MST 2001
$today = date('H:m:s m is month'); // 17:03:17 m is month
$today = date("H:i:s"); // 17:16:17
?>