Date and Time
The PHP date() function is used to format date and/or a time and formats as timestamp to a more readable data and time.
date(format, timestamp) //format is required and timestamp is optional
Here are some characters that are commonly uesd for dates:
- d -- represents the day of the month
- m -- represents a month
- Y -- represents a year
- l -- represents the day of the week
Other characters like '/','.' or '-' can also be inserted between the characters to add additional formatting.
<?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");
?>
output:
Today is 2016/02/17
Today is 2016.02.17
Today is 2016-02-17
Today is Wednesday
Use the date() function to automatically update the copyright year on the website
© 2010-<?php echo date("Y"); ?>
Here are some characters that are commonly used for times:
- h -- 12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros
- i -- minites with leading zero
- s -- seconds with leading zeros
- a -- lowecase ante meridiem and post meridiem
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<?php
echo "The time is " . date("h:i:sa");
?>
</body>
</html>
output:The time is 11:22:38pm
PHP use date_default_timezone_set() function to set timezone
<?php
date_default_timezone_set("America/New_York");
echo "The time is " . date("h:i:sa");
?>
output:The time is 11:24:21pm
The mktime() function returns the Unix timestamp for a date.The Unix timestamp contais the number of seconds between the Unix Epoch and the time specified.
mktime(hour, minute, second, month, day, year)
<?php
$d=mktime(11, 14, 54, 8, 12, 2014);
echo "Created date is " . date("Y-m-d h:i:sa", $d);
?>
output:Created date is 2014-08-12 11:14:54am
The PHP strtotime() function is used to convert a human readable string to a Unix time.
strtotime(time, now)
<?php
$d=strtotime("10:30pm April 15 2014");
echo "Created date is " . date("Y-m-d h:i:sa", $d);
?>
output:Created date is 2014-04-15 10:30:00pm
<?php
$d=strtotime("tomorrow");
echo date("Y-m-d h:i:sa", $d) . "<br>";
$d=strtotime("next Saturday");
echo date("Y-m-d h:i:sa", $d) . "<br>";
$d=strtotime("+3 Months");
echo date("Y-m-d h:i:sa", $d) . "<br>";
?>
<?php
$startdate = strtotime("Saturday");
$enddate = strtotime("+6 weeks",$startdate);
while ($startdate < $enddate) {
echo date("M d", $startdate),"<br>";
$startdate = strtotime("+1 week", $startdate);
}
?>
<?php
$d1=strtotime("July 04");
$d2=ceil(($d1-time())/60/60/24);
echo "There are " . $d2 ." days until 4th of July.";
?>