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date

(PHP 3, PHP 4 )

date -- Format a local time/date

Description

string date ( string format [, int timestamp])

Returns a string formatted according to the given format string using the given integer timestamp or the current local time if no timestamp is given. In otherwords, timestamp is optional and defaults to the value of time().

Note: 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). On Windows this range is limited from 01-01-1970 to 19-01-2038.

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).

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

`format` character	Description	Example returned values
`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`
`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`
`F`	A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March	`January` through `December`
`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`
`I` (capital i)	Whether or not the date is in daylights savings time	`1` if Daylight Savings Time, `0` otherwise.
`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`
`L`	Whether it's a leap year	`1` if it is a leap year, `0` otherwise.
`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`
`O`	Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours	Example: `+0200`
`r`	RFC 822 formatted date	Example: `Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200`
`s`	Seconds, with leading zeros	`00` through `59`
`S`	English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters	`st`, `nd`, `rd` or `th`. Works well with `j`
`t`	Number of days in the given month	`28` through `31`
`T`	Timezone setting of this machine	Examples: `EST`, `MDT` ...
`U`	Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT)	See also time()
`w`	Numeric representation of the day of the week	`0` (for Sunday) through `6` (for Saturday)
`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)
`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`
`z`	The day of the year	`0` through `366`
`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 `43200`

Unrecognized characters in the format string will be printed as-is. The Z format will always return 0 when using gmdate().

Example 1. date() examples
<?php // Prints something like: Wednesday echo date("l"); // Prints something like: Wednesday 15th of January 2003 05:51:38 AM echo date ("l dS 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)); ?>

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 savings 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 $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 z '); // 05-16-17, 10-03-01, 1631 1618 6 Fripm01 $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 15:16:08 MST 2001 $today = date('H:m:s \m \i\s\ \m\o\n\t\h'); // 17:03:17 m is month $today = date("H:i:s"); // 17:16:17 ?>

To format dates in other languages, you should use the setlocale() and strftime() functions.

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