PHP Date Format

PHP Date Format: Main Tips

• This date() function is used in formatting date and time in your code.
• There are special formatting characters: PHP year, week, day, etc.
• You can use it to make PHP get timestamp automatically and update the copyright dates on your website.

Syntax Rules Explained

The syntax rules for entering a date are rather simple:

date(format, timestamp)

The timestamp part describes an integer Unix timestamp. Entering it is optional - if you don't do it, it will result in making PHP get timestamp automatically and display the current local time (time()).

Now, for the format part, it's a different story. It is necessary to enter because that's how you specify how your PHP date formats will look.

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Common Formatting Characters

In PHP years, months and days are often referred to by using special symbols. There are four characters most commonly used with PHP date function:

• d (01-31) represents the day number.
• m (01-12) represents a month number.
• Y (four digits) represents a year number.
• l (lowercase 'L') indicates the day of the week.

More symbols (/, ., -) can be added for additional PHP date formatting.

In the code example below, you can see four different ways to create PHP date formats:

<?php
  echo "Today is " . date("Y/m/d") . "<br>";
  echo "Today is " . date("Y.m.d") . "<br>";
  echo "Today is " . date("Y-m-d") . "<br>";
  echo "Today is " . date("l");
?>

Now, the four characters listed above might be the most commonly used with datetime PHP function, but your choices are not limited to them. Let's have a look at the whole list of characters you can use for PHP date formats and what they indicate:

List of Predefined Constants

There are also a few predefined constants for datetime PHP that developers use. Take a look at the table below: