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Date and Time Functions in Php

Have you wanted to dynamically output the date or the current time on your webpage? Well now you can. Everytime a visitor loads your page, it can output the current date/time.

date() The Php Date Function

This function returns the current, local date and time, formatted according to your wishes. What you pass into the function is a cryptic-looking string of characters that are actually codes for formatting the date/time.

Without further ado, here are some examples:

Example Code
<?php
    echo date('l');
?>
Example Output
Saturday

Example Code
<?php
    echo date ('l, F jS Y');
?>
Example Output
Saturday, April 20th 2024

Example Code
<?php
    echo date('l, jS of F');
?>
Example Output
Saturday, 20th 2024f April

So what you can do here is pass special characters to the date function, such as 'l' (lowercase L) to print the month as a word, or 'Y' to print the year in 4 digits. You can also pass other chars that have no meaning to add that text to the formatted date, such as 'of' in the last example. To expound on the idea of adding other text, spaces and punctuation to the formatting, there is just one thing to remember. If the text or character that you want to add already has a special meaning (ie, it is one of the codes to format the time/date), you have to 'escape' it so that the char is simply printed out instead us being used to format the date string. To escape a char, you simply put a backslash '\' right before it (without the quotes). Here is an example ( 't' and 'h' both have special meaning for the date function):
Example Code
<?php
    echo date('l \t\h\e jS');
?>
Example Output
Saturday the 20th

List of all the Formatting possiblilities for the date() function

Sort by special formatting char | Group by function
Special formatting characterExplainationExample of what this produces (Using this server's current time and date)
(Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:24:24 -0400)
a
 Lowercase Ante meridiem or Post meridiem
am
A
 Uppercase Ante meridiem or Post meridiem
AM
B
 Swatch Internet time (Whatever that is)
225
d
 Day of the month in 2 digits with leading zeros
20
D
 A three-letter abbreviation for the day
Sat
F
 The month, written out.
April
g
 12-hour format of the hour without leading zeros
12
G
 24-hour format of the hour without leading zeros
0
h
 12-hour format of the hour with leading zeros
12
H
 24-hour format of the hour with leading zeros
00
i
 Minutes with leading zeros
24
I
 This is an uppercase i. 1 if we are in Daylight Savings Time, 0 if Standard time.
1
j
 Day of the month without leading zeros
20
l
 This is a lowercase L. The day of the week, written out
Saturday
L
 1 if it's a leap year, 0 if it's not.
1
m
 Month of the year as a number, with leading zeros
04
M
 A three-letter abbreviation for the month
Apr
n
 Month of the year as a number, without leading zeros
4
O
 Difference in hours from Greenwich time (GMT) to local time
-0400
r
 The current date in the RFC 822 format
Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:24:24 -0400
s
 Seconds, with leading zeros
24
S
 English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, these would be: st, nd, rd or th. It's common to use this along with j formatter
th
jS
 Just an example of calling jS together ie: <?php echo date('jS'); ?>
20th
t
 Number of days in the given month
30
T
 Timezone setting of this computer
EDT
U
 Seconds since the Unix Epoch which is January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT.
1713587064
 
 The U is the same as calling the time() function
1713587064
w
 The day of the week as a number. Starts at Sunday with 0 and ends with Saturday being a 6
6
W
 Week of the year, using the ISO-8601 standard (weeks starting on Monday) (Must have PHP 4.1.0 or higher)
16
Y
 The year in 4 digits
2024
y
 The year in 2 digits
24
z
 The current day of the year
110
Z
 Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is always negative, and for those east of UTC is always positive.
-14400

time() The Php Time Function

This function returns the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch which is January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT. It is the same as calling the date() function with the U formatter.

Example Code
<?php
    echo date('U');
?>
Example Output
1713587064

Example Code
<?php
    echo time();
?>
Example Output
1713587064


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