date() converts a timestamp similarly to getdate() but instead of returning an array, it returns a formated string and is far more flexible. It has two arguments; a format string and an optional timestamp. If no timestamp is provided, the present time is used. There are many formating options so I'll give them after two examples of date() in use. First, giving today's date:
<?
$today = date("m/d/Y");
echo "Today is $today";
?>
Today is 01/07/2009
To get the date one week from now, add one week's worth of seconds to time()
<?
$nextweek = time()+60*60*24*7;
$nextweek_formated = date("m/d/Y", $nextweek);
echo "Next week is $nextweek_formated";
?>
Next week is 01/14/2009
| format character | Description | Example returned values |
|---|---|---|
| Day | ||
| d | Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros | 01 to 31 |
| D | Three letter abbreviation of day | Mon through Sun |
| j | Day of the month without leading zeros | 1 to 31 |
| l (lowercase 'L') | Name of day | 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 | Number 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 | Name of month | January through December |
| m | Number month, with leading zeros | 01 through 12 |
| M | Abbreviation of month, three letters. | Jan through Dec |
| n | Number of 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 | 1999 or 2003 |
| y | A two digit representation of a year | 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 |
| u | Milliseconds (added in PHP 5.2.2) | 54321 |
| Timezone | ||
| e | Timezone identifier (added in PHP 5.1.0) | 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 | +0200 |
| P | Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes (added in PHP 5.1.3) | Example: +02:00 |
| T | Timezone abbreviation | 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. | -43200 through 50400 |
| Full Date/Time | ||
| c | ISO 8601 date (added in PHP 5) | 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00 |
| r | RFC 2822 formatted date | Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200 |
| U | Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) | See also time() |
Characters that are not format characters are printed as-is so you can use slashes, hyphens, periods ect., to seperate parts of the date. If you use a character that is format character in the string, it must be escaped. If the character becomes a control character when escaped, the backslash must also be escaped. In the next example, I used the characters n, e, t, i and s in the format string so they are escaped. The characters n and t become special characters when escaped so the backslash preceding them is escaped as well:
<?
$nextweek = time()+60*60*24*7;
$nextweek_formated = date("\\n\ex\\t \w\e\ek \i\s m/d/Y", $nextweek);
echo "01/14/2009";
?>
next week is 01/14/2009
gmdate() works exactly the same as date() except it use GMT instead of the local time.
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