date
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
date — Format a local time/date
Description
$format
[, int $timestamp = time()
] )
Returns a string formatted according to the given format string using the
given integer timestamp or the current time
if no timestamp is given. In other words, timestamp
is optional and defaults to the value of time().
Parameters
-
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_RSScontains the format string 'D, d M Y H:i:s'.The following characters are recognized in the formatparameter stringformatcharacterDescription 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 (added in PHP 5.1.0) 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 (added in PHP 4.1.0) 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 year number. 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. (added in PHP 5.1.0) Examples: 1999 or 2003 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 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 (added in PHP 5.2.2). Note that date() will always generate 000000 since it takes an integer parameter, whereas DateTime::format() does support microseconds. Example: 654321 Timezone --- --- e Timezone identifier (added in PHP 5.1.0) 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) in hours Example: +0200 P Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes (added in PHP 5.1.3) Example: +02:00 T Timezone abbreviation Examples: EST, MDT ... 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 (added in PHP 5) 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00 r » RFC 2822 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 integer timestamps the u format character is only useful when using the date_format() function with user based timestamps created with date_create().
-
timestamp -
The optional
timestampparameter is an integer Unix timestamp that defaults to the current local time if atimestampis not given. In other words, it defaults to the value of time().
Return Values
Returns a formatted date string. If a non-numeric value is used for
timestamp, FALSE is returned and an
E_WARNING level error is emitted.
Errors/Exceptions
Every call to a date/time function will generate a E_NOTICE
if the time zone is not valid, and/or a E_STRICT
or E_WARNING message
if using the system settings or the TZ environment
variable. See also date_default_timezone_set()
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 5.1.0 | 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). However, before PHP 5.1.0 this range was limited from 01-01-1970 to 19-01-2038 on some systems (e.g. Windows). |
| 5.1.0 |
Now issues the |
| 5.1.1 |
There are useful constants
of standard date/time formats that can be used to specify the
format parameter.
|
Examples
Example #1 date() examples
<?php
// set the default timezone to use. Available since PHP 5.1
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()
<?php
// prints something like: Wednesday the 15th
echo date('l \t\h\e 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 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
<?php
// 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, you should use the setlocale() and strftime() functions 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'] since PHP 5.1.
See Also
- gmdate() - Format a GMT/UTC date/time
- idate() - Format a local time/date as integer
- getdate() - Get date/time information
- getlastmod() - Gets time of last page modification
- mktime() - Get Unix timestamp for a date
- strftime() - Format a local time/date according to locale settings
- time() - Return current Unix timestamp
- strtotime() - Parse about any English textual datetime description into a Unix timestamp
- Predefined DateTime Constants
add a note
User Contributed Notes 43 notes
Things to be aware of when using week numbers with years.
<?php
echo date("YW", strtotime("2011-01-07")); // gives 201101
echo date("YW", strtotime("2011-12-31")); // gives 201152
echo date("YW", strtotime("2011-01-01")); // gives 201152 too
?>
BUT
<?php
echo date("oW", strtotime("2011-01-07")); // gives 201101
echo date("oW", strtotime("2011-12-31")); // gives 201152
echo date("oW", strtotime("2011-01-01")); // gives 201052 (Year is different than previous example)
?>
Reason:
Y is year from the date
o is ISO-8601 year number
W is ISO-8601 week number of year
Conclusion:
if using 'W' for the week number use 'o' for the year.