- Php get current date formatted
- PHP date() Function
- Definition and Usage
- Syntax
- Parameter Values
- Technical Details
- PHP Date and Time
- The PHP Date() Function
- Syntax
- Get a Date
- Example
- PHP Tip — Automatic Copyright Year
- Example
- Get a Time
- Example
- Get Your Time Zone
- Example
- Create a Date With mktime()
- Syntax
- Example
- Create a Date From a String With strtotime()
- Syntax
- Example
- Example
- More Date Examples
- Example
- Example
- Complete PHP Date Reference
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PHP date() Function
Format a local date and time and return the formatted date strings:
// Prints the day, date, month, year, time, AM or PM
echo date(«l jS \of F Y h:i:s A»);
?>
Definition and Usage
The date() function formats a local date and time, and returns the formatted date string.
Syntax
Parameter Values
- d — The day of the month (from 01 to 31)
- D — A textual representation of a day (three letters)
- j — The day of the month without leading zeros (1 to 31)
- l (lowercase ‘L’) — A full textual representation of a day
- N — The ISO-8601 numeric representation of a day (1 for Monday, 7 for Sunday)
- S — The English ordinal suffix for the day of the month (2 characters st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j)
- w — A numeric representation of the day (0 for Sunday, 6 for Saturday)
- z — The day of the year (from 0 through 365)
- W — The ISO-8601 week number of year (weeks starting on Monday)
- F — A full textual representation of a month (January through December)
- m — A numeric representation of a month (from 01 to 12)
- M — A short textual representation of a month (three letters)
- n — A numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros (1 to 12)
- t — The number of days in the given month
- L — Whether it’s a leap year (1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise)
- o — The ISO-8601 year number
- Y — A four digit representation of a year
- y — A two digit representation of a year
- a — Lowercase am or pm
- A — Uppercase AM or PM
- B — Swatch Internet time (000 to 999)
- g — 12-hour format of an hour (1 to 12)
- G — 24-hour format of an hour (0 to 23)
- h — 12-hour format of an hour (01 to 12)
- H — 24-hour format of an hour (00 to 23)
- i — Minutes with leading zeros (00 to 59)
- s — Seconds, with leading zeros (00 to 59)
- u — Microseconds (added in PHP 5.2.2)
- e — The timezone identifier (Examples: UTC, GMT, Atlantic/Azores)
- I (capital i) — Whether the date is in daylights savings time (1 if Daylight Savings Time, 0 otherwise)
- O — Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours (Example: +0100)
- P — Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours:minutes (added in PHP 5.1.3)
- T — Timezone abbreviations (Examples: EST, MDT)
- Z — Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is negative (-43200 to 50400)
- c — The ISO-8601 date (e.g. 2013-05-05T16:34:42+00:00)
- r — The RFC 2822 formatted date (e.g. Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:01:05 +0200)
- U — The seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT)
and the following predefined constants can also be used (available since PHP 5.1.0):
- DATE_ATOM — Atom (example: 2013-04-12T15:52:01+00:00)
- DATE_COOKIE — HTTP Cookies (example: Friday, 12-Apr-13 15:52:01 UTC)
- DATE_ISO8601 — ISO-8601 (example: 2013-04-12T15:52:01+0000)
- DATE_RFC822 — RFC 822 (example: Fri, 12 Apr 13 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_RFC850 — RFC 850 (example: Friday, 12-Apr-13 15:52:01 UTC)
- DATE_RFC1036 — RFC 1036 (example: Fri, 12 Apr 13 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_RFC1123 — RFC 1123 (example: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_RFC2822 — RFC 2822 (Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_RFC3339 — Same as DATE_ATOM (since PHP 5.1.3)
- DATE_RSS — RSS (Fri, 12 Aug 2013 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_W3C — World Wide Web Consortium (example: 2013-04-12T15:52:01+00:00)
Technical Details
Return Value: | Returns a formatted date string on success. FALSE on failure + an E_WARNING |
---|---|
PHP Version: | 4+ |
Changelog: | PHP 5.1.0: Added E_STRICT and E_NOTICE time zone errors. Valid range of timestamp is now from Fri, 13 Dec 1901 20:45:54 GMT to Tue, 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 GMT. Before version 5.1.0 timestamp was limited from 01-01-1970 to 19-01-2038 on some systems (e.g. Windows). PHP 5.1.1: Added constants of standard date/time formats that can be used to specify the format parameter |
❮ PHP Date/Time Reference
PHP Date and Time
The PHP date() function is used to format a date and/or a time.
The PHP Date() Function
The PHP date() function formats a timestamp to a more readable date and time.
Syntax
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
format | Required. Specifies the format of the timestamp |
timestamp | Optional. Specifies a timestamp. Default is the current date and time |
A timestamp is a sequence of characters, denoting the date and/or time at which a certain event occurred.
Get a Date
The required format parameter of the date() function specifies how to format the date (or time).
Here are some characters that are commonly used for dates:
- d — Represents the day of the month (01 to 31)
- m — Represents a month (01 to 12)
- Y — Represents a year (in four digits)
- l (lowercase ‘L’) — Represents the day of the week
Other characters, like»/», «.», or «-» can also be inserted between the characters to add additional formatting.
The example below formats today’s date in three different ways:
Example
echo «Today is » . date(«Y/m/d») . «
«;
echo «Today is » . date(«Y.m.d») . «
«;
echo «Today is » . date(«Y-m-d») . «
«;
echo «Today is » . date(«l»);
?>?php
PHP Tip — Automatic Copyright Year
Use the date() function to automatically update the copyright year on your website:
Example
Get a Time
Here are some characters that are commonly used for times:
- H — 24-hour format of an hour (00 to 23)
- h — 12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros (01 to 12)
- i — Minutes with leading zeros (00 to 59)
- s — Seconds with leading zeros (00 to 59)
- a — Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem (am or pm)
The example below outputs the current time in the specified format:
Example
Note that the PHP date() function will return the current date/time of the server!
Get Your Time Zone
If the time you got back from the code is not correct, it’s probably because your server is in another country or set up for a different timezone.
So, if you need the time to be correct according to a specific location, you can set the timezone you want to use.
The example below sets the timezone to «America/New_York», then outputs the current time in the specified format:
Example
Create a Date With mktime()
The optional timestamp parameter in the date() function specifies a timestamp. If omitted, the current date and time will be used (as in the examples above).
The PHP mktime() function returns the Unix timestamp for a date. The Unix timestamp contains the number of seconds between the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) and the time specified.
Syntax
The example below creates a date and time with the date() function from a number of parameters in the mktime() function:
Example
Create a Date From a String With strtotime()
The PHP strtotime() function is used to convert a human readable date string into a Unix timestamp (the number of seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT).
Syntax
The example below creates a date and time from the strtotime() function:
Example
PHP is quite clever about converting a string to a date, so you can put in various values:
Example
$d=strtotime(«next Saturday»);
echo date(«Y-m-d h:i:sa», $d) . «
«;
However, strtotime() is not perfect, so remember to check the strings you put in there.
More Date Examples
The example below outputs the dates for the next six Saturdays:
Example
$startdate = strtotime(«Saturday»);
$enddate = strtotime(«+6 weeks», $startdate);
?php
while ($startdate < $enddate) echo date("M d", $startdate) . "
«;
$startdate = strtotime(«+1 week», $startdate);
>
?>
The example below outputs the number of days until 4th of July:
Example
$d1=strtotime(«July 04»);
$d2=ceil(($d1-time())/60/60/24);
echo «There are » . $d2 .» days until 4th of July.»;
?>?php
Complete PHP Date Reference
For a complete reference of all date functions, go to our complete PHP Date Reference.
The reference contains a brief description, and examples of use, for each function!