PHP date function

date

(PHP 3, PHP 4, PHP 5)

date -- Format a local time/dateDescriptionstring date ( string format [, int timestamp] )

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.

Table 1. The following characters are recognized in the
format parameter string

format characterDescriptionExample returned valuesDay------dDay of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros01 to 31DA textual representation of a day, three lettersMon through SunjDay of the month without leading zeros1 to 31l (lowercase 'L')A full textual representation of the day of the weekSunday through SaturdayNISO-8601 numeric representation of the day of the week (added in
PHP 5.1.0)1 (for Monday) through 7 (for Sunday)SEnglish ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters st, nd, rd or
th. Works well with j
wNumeric representation of the day of the week0 (for Sunday) through 6 (for Saturday)zThe day of the year (starting from 0)0 through 365Week------WISO-8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday (added in PHP 4.1.0)Example: 42 (the 42nd week in the year)Month------FA full textual representation of a month, such as January or MarchJanuary through DecembermNumeric representation of a month, with leading zeros01 through 12MA short textual representation of a month, three lettersJan through DecnNumeric representation of a month, without leading zeros1 through 12tNumber of days in the given month28 through 31Year------LWhether it's a leap year1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise.oISO-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 2003YA full numeric representation of a year, 4 digitsExamples: 1999 or 2003yA two digit representation of a yearExamples: 99 or 03Time------aLowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiemam or pmAUppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiemAM or PMBSwatch Internet time000 through 999g12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros1 through 12G24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros0 through 23h12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros01 through 12H24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros00 through 23iMinutes with leading zeros00 to 59sSeconds, with leading zeros00 through 59Timezone------eTimezone identifier (added in PHP 5.1.0)Examples: UTC, GMT, Atlantic/AzoresI (capital i)Whether or not the date is in daylight saving time1 if Daylight Saving Time, 0 otherwise.ODifference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hoursExample: +0200PDifference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes (added in PHP 5.1.3)Example: +02:00TTimezone abbreviationExamples: EST, MDT ...ZTimezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is always
negative, and for those east of UTC is always positive.-43200 through 50400Full Date/Time------cISO 8601 date (added in PHP 5)2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00rRFC 2822 formatted dateExample: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200USeconds 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().

timestamp

The optional timestamp parameter is an
integer Unix timestamp that defaults to the current
local time if a timestamp is 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 message
if using the system settings or the TZ environment
variable. See also date_default_timezone_set()

ChangeLog

VersionDescription5.1.0 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 E_STRICT and E_NOTICE
time zone errors.

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

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

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

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).

Tip:
Timestamp of the start of the request is available in
$_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME'] since PHP 5.1.

See Also

getlastmod()gmdate()mktime()strftime()time()