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
date
Returns a string formatted according to the given format string using the given integer timestamp (Unix timestamp) or the current time if no timestamp is given. In other words, timestamp is optional and defaults to the value of time() .
Unix timestamps do not handle timezones. Use the DateTimeImmutable class, and its DateTimeInterface::format() formatting method to format date/time information with a timezone attached.
Parameters
Note: date() will always generate 000000 as microseconds since it takes an int parameter, whereas DateTime::format() does support microseconds if DateTime was created with microseconds.
The optional timestamp parameter is an int Unix timestamp that defaults to the current local time if timestamp is omitted or null . In other words, it defaults to the value of time() .
Return Values
Returns a formatted date string.
Errors/Exceptions
Every call to a date/time function will generate a E_WARNING if the time zone is not valid. See also date_default_timezone_set()
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 8.0.0 | timestamp is nullable now. |
Examples
Example #1 date() examples
// set the default timezone to use.
date_default_timezone_set ( ‘UTC’ );
// Prints something like: Monday
echo date ( «l» );
// Prints something like: Monday 8th of August 2005 03:12:46 PM
echo date ( ‘l jS \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 ));
/* use the constants in the format parameter */
// prints something like: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 15:28:57 -0700
echo date ( DATE_RFC2822 );
// prints something like: 2000-07-01T00:00:00+00:00
echo date ( DATE_ATOM , 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()
It is possible to use date() and mktime() together to find dates in the future or the past.
Example #3 date() and mktime() example
$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 saving 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
// Assuming today is March 10th, 2001, 5:16:18 pm, and that we are in the
// Mountain Standard Time (MST) Time Zone
$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’ ); // 05-16-18, 10-03-01, 1631 1618 6 Satpm01
$today = date ( ‘\i\t \i\s \t\h\e jS \d\a\y.’ ); // it is the 10th day.
$today = date ( «D M j G:i:s T Y» ); // Sat Mar 10 17:16:18 MST 2001
$today = date ( ‘H:m:s \m \i\s\ \m\o\n\t\h’ ); // 17:03:18 m is month
$today = date ( «H:i:s» ); // 17:16:18
$today = date ( «Y-m-d H:i:s» ); // 2001-03-10 17:16:18 (the MySQL DATETIME format)
?>
To format dates in other languages, IntlDateFormatter::format() can be used instead of date() .
Notes
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).
Timestamp of the start of the request is available in $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_TIME’] .
See Also
- DateTimeImmutable::__construct() — Returns new DateTimeImmutable object
- DateTimeInterface::format() — Returns date formatted according to given format
- gmdate() — Format a GMT/UTC date/time
- idate() — Format a local time/date part as integer
- getdate() — Get date/time information
- getlastmod() — Gets time of last page modification
- mktime() — Get Unix timestamp for a date
- IntlDateFormatter::format() — Format the date/time value as a string
- time() — Return current Unix timestamp
- Predefined DateTime Constants
User Contributed Notes
- Date/Time Functions
- checkdate
- date_add
- date_create_from_format
- date_create_immutable_from_format
- date_create_immutable
- date_create
- date_date_set
- date_default_timezone_get
- date_default_timezone_set
- date_diff
- date_format
- date_get_last_errors
- date_interval_create_from_date_string
- date_interval_format
- date_isodate_set
- date_modify
- date_offset_get
- date_parse_from_format
- date_parse
- date_sub
- date_sun_info
- date_sunrise
- date_sunset
- date_time_set
- date_timestamp_get
- date_timestamp_set
- date_timezone_get
- date_timezone_set
- date
- getdate
- gettimeofday
- gmdate
- gmmktime
- gmstrftime
- idate
- localtime
- microtime
- mktime
- strftime
- strptime
- strtotime
- time
- timezone_abbreviations_list
- timezone_identifiers_list
- timezone_location_get
- timezone_name_from_abbr
- timezone_name_get
- timezone_offset_get
- timezone_open
- timezone_transitions_get
- timezone_version_get