date_format
The format of the outputted date string . See the formatting options below. There are also several predefined date constants that may be used instead, so for example DATE_RSS contains the format string ‘D, d M Y H:i:s’ .
| format character | Description | Example returned values |
|---|---|---|
| Day | — | — |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| N | ISO 8601 numeric representation of the day of the week | 1 (for Monday) through 7 (for Sunday) |
| S | English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters | st , nd , rd or th . Works well with j |
| w | Numeric representation of the day of the week | 0 (for Sunday) through 6 (for Saturday) |
| z | The day of the year (starting from 0) | 0 through 365 |
| Week | — | — |
| W | ISO 8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday | Example: 42 (the 42nd week in the year) |
| Month | — | — |
| F | A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March | January through December |
| 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 |
| t | Number of days in the given month | 28 through 31 |
| Year | — | — |
| L | Whether it’s a leap year | 1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise. |
| o | ISO 8601 week-numbering year. This has the same value as Y , except that if the ISO week number ( W ) belongs to the previous or next year, that year is used instead. | Examples: 1999 or 2003 |
| X | An expanded full numeric representation of a year, at least 4 digits, with — for years BCE, and + for years CE. | Examples: -0055 , +0787 , +1999 , +10191 |
| x | An expanded full numeric representation if requried, or a standard full numeral representation if possible (like Y ). At least four digits. Years BCE are prefixed with a — . Years beyond (and including) 10000 are prefixed by a + . | Examples: -0055 , 0787 , 1999 , +10191 |
| Y | A full numeric representation of a year, at least 4 digits, with — for years BCE. | Examples: -0055 , 0787 , 1999 , 2003 , 10191 |
| y | A two digit representation of a year | Examples: 99 or 03 |
| Time | — | — |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| s | Seconds with leading zeros | 00 through 59 |
| u | Microseconds. Note that date() will always generate 000000 since it takes an int parameter, whereas DateTime::format() does support microseconds if DateTime was created with microseconds. | Example: 654321 |
| v | Milliseconds. Same note applies as for u . | Example: 654 |
| Timezone | — | — |
| e | Timezone identifier | Examples: UTC , GMT , Atlantic/Azores |
| I (capital i) | Whether or not the date is in daylight saving time | 1 if Daylight Saving Time, 0 otherwise. |
| O | Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) without colon between hours and minutes | Example: +0200 |
| P | Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes | Example: +02:00 |
| p | The same as P , but returns Z instead of +00:00 (available as of PHP 8.0.0) | Examples: Z or +02:00 |
| T | Timezone abbreviation, if known; otherwise the GMT offset. | Examples: EST , MDT , +05 |
| 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 50400 |
| Full Date/Time | — | — |
| c | ISO 8601 date | 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00 |
| r | » RFC 2822/» RFC 5322 formatted date | Example: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200 |
| U | Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) | See also time() |
Unrecognized characters in the format string will be printed as-is. The Z format will always return 0 when using gmdate() .
Note:
Since this function only accepts int timestamps the u format character is only useful when using the date_format() function with user based timestamps created with date_create() .
Return Values
Returns the formatted date string on success.
Localizing Dates
How to localize dates manually or with strftime() function.
Commonly Used Date Formats
'; echo 'UK format: ' . date('d/m/Y') . '
'; echo 'German format: ' . date('d.m.Y') . '
'; echo 'International format: ' . date('Y-d-m'); - In the United States, it’s (mostly) month, day, and year
- In the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, it’s (mostly) day, month, and year
- The international standard date notation starts with the year and continues with the month and day
The preceding code used a four-digit representation of the year because this is nonambiguous. In practice, however, two-digit years are also commonly used.
Manually Localizing Dates
If you want to localized date and time values manually, you have to do the translations by yourself and store the results in an array. Then, you can use date() to retrieve information about a date. This serves as an index for your array.
Example (Spanish): Localizing Dates Manually
The preceding code does this for both the day of the month and the month itself. One array contains the Spanish weekdays; another one contains the month names.
Note: the array $months has a dummy element at position 0.
Localizing Dates Using strftime()
Note: This function has been DEPRECATED as of PHP 8.1.0, use IntlDateFormatter::format() instead.
The PHP function strftime() formats a date/time value according to the sytem’s locale, for example, to the web server’s local settings.
Generally, the language of the system is automatically used. However, this can be overridden using setlocale() :
'); setlocale(LC_TIME, 'en_gb'); echo strftime('In (British) English: %c
'); setlocale(LC_TIME, 'de_DE'); echo strftime('Auf Deutsch: %c
'); setlocale(LC_TIME, 'fr_FR'); echo strftime('En Francais: %c'); The function strftime() expects a format string (as does date() ) in which it accepts a large number of special symbols. Table contains a full list of strftime() special symbols.
The preceding code changes the locale several times using setlocale() and then calls strftime() .
Output of the current date in different locales.
In (American) English: Wed 06 Apr 2022 01:54:06 PM CEST In (British) English: Wed 06 Apr 2022 01:54:06 PM CEST Auf Deutsch: Mit 06 Apr 2022 13:54:06 CEST En Francais: mer 06 avr 2022 13:54:06 CEST
System does not support locales:
In (American) English: 04/06/22 01:54:06 PM CEST In (British) English: 04/06/22 01:54:06 PM CEST Auf Deutsch: 04/06/22 13:54:06 CEST En Francais: 04/06/22 13:54:06 CEST
Note the differences that can be seen in outputs. According to the documentation, most of strftime() also works on Windows, but on some configurations changing the locale just does not seem to work. Therefore, it is very important to test first whether the system supports localized dates.
Formatting Symbols for strftime()
Whenever it says standard format in the table, the formatting symbol gets replaced by the associated value according to the local setting.
The Date and Time Tutorials: