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 character
Description
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
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 setting of this machine
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.
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
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 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
<?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 15th of August 2005 03:12:46 PM 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));
/* use the constants in the format parameter */ // prints something like: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:12:46 UTC echo date(DATE_RFC822);
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.
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
$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 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.
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