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.

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: