The date function returns a formatted string of a date and time. the first parameter is a string that specifies how the date and time should be formatted. It can take a second, optional parameter of a timestamp. If no date and time or timestamp are passed, it uses now. It doesn't support time zones.
$now = date("l jS \of F Y h:i:s A");
echo $now;
// Tuesday, 2nd November 2024 4:03:26 AM
$now1 = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', mktime(11,0,0,10,3,1975));
echo $now1;
// 1975-10-03 11:00:00
Here is a list of the characters that can be used to format the date and time string:
- d - The day of the month (from 01 to 31)
- D - A textual representation of a day (three letters)
- j - The day of the month without leading zeros (1 to 31)
- l - A full textual representation of a day
- N - The ISO-8601 numeric representation of a day (1 for Monday, 7 for Sunday)
- S - The English ordinal suffix for the day of the month (2 characters st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j)
- w - A numeric representation of the day (0 for Sunday, 6 for Saturday)
- z - The day of the year (from 0 through 365)
- W - The ISO-8601 week number of year (weeks starting on Monday)
- F - A full textual representation of a month (January through December)
- m - A numeric representation of a month (from 01 to 12)
- M - A short textual representation of a month (three letters)
- n - A numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros (1 to 12)
- t - The number of days in the given month
- L - Whether it's a leap year (1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise)
- o - The ISO-8601 year number
- Y - A four digit representation of a year
- y - A two digit representation of a year
- a - Lowercase am or pm
- A - Uppercase AM or PM
- B - Swatch Internet time (000 to 999)
- g - 12-hour format of an hour (1 to 12)
- G - 24-hour format of an hour (0 to 23)
- h - 12-hour format of an hour (01 to 12)
- H - 24-hour format of an hour (00 to 23)
- i - Minutes with leading zeros (00 to 59)
- s - Seconds, with leading zeros (00 to 59)
- u - Microseconds (added in PHP 5.2.2)
- e - The timezone identifier (Examples: UTC, GMT, Atlantic/Azores)
- I - Whether the date is in daylights savings time (1 if Daylight Savings Time, 0 otherwise)
- O - Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours (Example: +0100)
- P - Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours:minutes (added in PHP 5.1.3)
- T - Timezone abbreviations (Examples: EST, MDT)
- Z - Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is negative (-43200 to 50400)
- c - The ISO-8601 date (e.g. 2013-05-05T16:34:42+00:00)
- r - The RFC 2822 formatted date (e.g. Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:01:05 +0200)
- U - The seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT)
The following predefined constants can also be used (available since PHP 5.1.0):
- DATE_ATOM - Atom (example: 2013-04-12T15:52:01+00:00)
- DATE_COOKIE - HTTP Cookies (example: Friday, 12-Apr-13 15:52:01 UTC)
- DATE_ISO8601 - ISO-8601 (example: 2013-04-12T15:52:01+0000)
- DATE_RFC822 - RFC 822 (example: Fri, 12 Apr 13 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_RFC850 - RFC 850 (example: Friday, 12-Apr-13 15:52:01 UTC)
- DATE_RFC1036 - RFC 1036 (example: Fri, 12 Apr 13 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_RFC1123 - RFC 1123 (example: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_RFC2822 - RFC 2822 (Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_RFC3339 - Same as DATE_ATOM (since PHP 5.1.3)
- DATE_RSS - RSS (Fri, 12 Aug 2013 15:52:01 +0000)
- DATE_W3C - World Wide Web Consortium (example: 2013-04-12T15:52:01+00:00)