Date time formatting in PHP
Many scripts written in php need date and time function . PHP has many predefined date formats and you can also customized it as per your need .
Here are some of the php date format examples and additional details for php.
Examples
Variable $today has different formats as we set the format types in the following examples :
$today = date(“F j, Y, g:i a”); -> February 5, 2010, 6:20 pm
$today = date(“m.d.y”); -> 02.05.10
$today = date(“j, n, Y”); -> 5, 2, 2010
$today = date(“Ymd”); -> 20100205
$today = date(‘h-i-s, j-m-y, it is w Day’); -> 06-20-25, 5-02-10, 2028 2025 5 Fripm10
$today = date(‘it is the jS day.’); -> it is the 5th day.
$today = date(“D M j G:i:s T Y”); -> Fri Feb 5 18:20:25 PST 2010
$today = date(‘H:m:s m is month’); -> 18:02:25 m is month
Options for php date format
| Character | Description | Example |
| 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) | Example: 654321 |
| Time zone | ||
| 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() |
Special Purpose php Date formatting
DateTime::ATOM
DATE_ATOM Atom (example: 2005-08-15T15:52:01+00:00)
DateTime::COOKIE
DATE_COOKIE HTTP Cookies (example: Monday, 15-Aug-05 15:52:01 UTC)
DateTime::ISO8601
DATE_ISO8601 ISO-8601 (example: 2005-08-15T15:52:01+0000)
DateTime::RFC822
DATE_RFC822 RFC 822 (example: Mon, 15 Aug 05 15:52:01 +0000)
DateTime::RFC850
DATE_RFC850 RFC 850 (example: Monday, 15-Aug-05 15:52:01 UTC)
DateTime::RFC1036
DATE_RFC1036 RFC 1036 (example: Mon, 15 Aug 05 15:52:01 +0000)
DateTime::RFC1123
DATE_RFC1123 RFC 1123 (example: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:52:01 +0000)
DateTime::RFC2822
DATE_RFC2822 RFC 2822 (Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:52:01 +0000)
DateTime::RFC3339
DATE_RFC3339 Same as DATE_ATOM (since PHP 5.1.3)
DateTime::RSS
DATE_RSS RSS (Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:52:01 +0000)
DateTime::W3C
DATE_W3C World Wide Web Consortium (example: 2005-08-15T15:52:01+00:00)
Date Time Operations & Preformating in PHP
- DateTime::add
— Adds an amount of days, months, years, hours, minutes and seconds to a
DateTime object - DateTime::__construct
— Returns new DateTime object - DateTime::createFromFormat
— Returns new DateTime object formatted according to the specified format - DateTime::diff
— Returns the difference between two DateTime objects - DateTime::format
— Returns date formatted according to given format - DateTime::getLastErrors
— Returns the warnings and errors - DateTime::getOffset
— Returns the timezone offset - DateTime::getTimestamp
— Gets the Unix timestamp - DateTime::getTimezone
— Return time zone relative to given DateTime - DateTime::modify
— Alters the timestamp - DateTime::__set_state
— The __set_state handler - DateTime::setDate
— Sets the date - DateTime::setISODate
— Sets the ISO date - DateTime::setTime
— Sets the time - DateTime::setTimestamp
— Sets the date and time based on an Unix timestamp - DateTime::setTimezone
— Sets the time zone for the DateTime object - DateTime::sub
— Subtracts an amount of days, months, years, hours, minutes and seconds
from a DateTime object - DateTime::__wakeup
— The __wakeup handler