PHP

HOW TO FORMAT DATE AND TIME IN PHP WITH THE date() FUNCTION

Date and time are easily formatted to human readable form using PHP's in-built date() function. This function takes a format as a parameter and an optional timestamp. If no timestamp is given, it defaults to the current time() timestamp of the server.

A timestamp, also known as a Unix Timestamp, is the number of seconds since 00:00:00 GMT on 1 January 1970.

The general format of the date function is as follows:

date(date format);

Example 1:

$date=date("d/m/Y");
echo $date;

This will output:

20/11/2008

Example 2:

$date=date("d-m-Y");
echo $date;

This will output:

20-11-2008

Example 3:

$date=date("d-m-Y G:i:s");
echo $date;

This will output:

20-11-2008 17:16:55

The following table lists the common formats that you can use for this function:

Format	Example
d	01 to 31
D	Mon to Sun
j	1 to 31
l	Sunday to Saturday
N	1 for Monday to 7 for Sunday
S	st, nd, rd or th
w	0 for Sunday to 6 for Saturday
z	0 to 365
W	Example: 25 would be 25th week in the year
F	January to December
m	01 to 12
M	Jan to Dec
n	1 to 12
t	Number of days a month has: 28, 29, 30 or 31
L	1 for leap year, 0 if not
Y	Eg: 1978, 2008
y	Eg: 78 or 08
a	am or pm
A	AM or PM
g	12 hour without leading zeros format: 1 to 12
G	24 hour without leading zeros format: 0 to 23
h	12 hour with leading zeros format: 01 to 12
H	24 hour with leading zeros format: 00 to 23
i	minutes with leading zeros: 00 to 59
s	seconds with leading zeros: 00 to 59

See also:

time()
mktime()
gmdate()
strtotime()
microtime()