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.
See also getlastmod(), gmdate(), mktime(), strftime() and
time().
