Date Timestamp Formats in PHP

In this article, you will learn how to format date and timestamp in PHP with descriptions and different formatting examples.

PHP date() function

The date() function gives you all the information about the current date on the server and converts date timestamp into a more readable human format.

PHP time() function

The time() function returns the number of seconds between the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT).

PHP mktime() function

The mktime() function creates the timestamp based on a specific date and time and it is in the following format.

mktime(hour, minute, second, month, day, year)

Syntax of date()

date(format, timestamp)

Here, format is the format of the timestamp and the timestamp contains either the current time as a Unix timestamp or the specified time. The format is the required parameter and timestamp is an optional parameter.

It returns a string according to the given format and timestamp. The timestamp is an optional field and by default it takes current time or time().

The following table lists the format parameter characters.

Format	Description	Examples
*Day*
d	Day of month	01 - 31
j	Day of Month	1 - 31
D	Day of week	Mon - Sun
l	Day of week	Sunday - Saturday
N	Day of Week	1 - 7( Mon to Sun)
w	Day of Week	0 - 6(Sun to Sat)
z	Day of year	0 - 365
Week
W	Week number of year	1 - 53 or 54(leap year)
Month
F	Month name	January - December
m	Month of year (number-leading zeroes)	01 - 12
M	Month of year	Jan - Dec
n	Month of year	1 - 12
t	Number of days in a month	28 or 30 or 31
Year
L	Leap year ('1' for yes, '0' for no)	1
y	Year (two digits)	18
Y	Year (four digits)	2018
Time
A	Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem	'AM' or 'PM'
g	12-hour format of an hour	1 - 12
G	24-hour format of an hour	0 - 23
h	12-hour format of an hour	01 - 12
H	24-hour format of an hour	00 - 23
i	Minutes with leading zeros	00 - 59
s	Seconds with leading zeros	00 - 59
Full Date/Time
c	ISO 8601 date	2018-10-12T18:15:21+00:00
r	formatted date	Example: Wed, 05 Oct 2018 20:01:06 +0200
U	Time stamp	948372444

Examples

In the below code, we have mentioned three data with default timestamp examples.

<html>
<head>
<title>Date Timestamp Formats in PHP</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
 print date("M d Y G.i:s", time());
 echo '<br/>';
 print date("D Y G.i:s", time());
 echo '<br/>Today is ';
 print date("z", time());
 echo " day of the year";
 ?>
</body>
</html>

and in the below example, we have set the timestamp values.

<html>
<head>
<title>Date Timestamp Formats in PHP</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
 print date("M d Y G.i:s", strtotime("2018-10-07 22:30:40"));
 echo '<br/>';
 print date("M d Y G.i:s", mktime(5, 10, 40, 10, 1, 2018));
 ?>
</body>
</html>