PHP Date and Time

Hello folks! welcome back to a new section of our tutorial on PHP. In this section of our PHP tutorial, we will be studying about Date and Time in PHP.

Date and time are so much part of everyday life to the point that it becomes very easy to work with them without thinking. PHP also provides powerful tools for date arithmetic that makes handling dates very easy.

Getting Time Stamp with time() Function

The Php time() function provides you all the information that you need about the current date and time. It requires no arguments but returns an integer.

READ: A Definitive Guide to PHP Bugs Debugging

The integer returned by the time() function represents the number of seconds elapsed since midnight GMT on January 1^st, 1970. This moment is known as UNIX epoch, and the number of seconds elapsed since then is referred to as a time stamp.

Example

The following below is a simple example -

<?php
   print time();
?>

Output

When the above code is executed, it will produce the following result -

1601898793

This is something hard to understand. But PHP offers excellent tools to convert a time stamp into a human readable form.

READ: PHP Error and Exception Handling

Converting a Time Stamp with getdate() Function

The getdate() function optionally accepts a time stamp and then returns an associative array containing information about the date. If you exclude the time stamp, then it works with the current time stamp as returned by the time() function.

Following table list the elements contained in the array returned by getdate() function -

Sr.No	Key & Description	Example
1	seconds Seconds past the minutes (0-59)	20
2	minutes Minutes past the hour (0 - 59)	29
3	hours Hours of the day (0 - 23)	22
4	mday Day of the month (1 - 31)	11
5	wday Day of the week (0 - 6)	4
6	mon Month of the year (1 - 12)	7
7	year Year (4 digits)	1997
8	yday Day of year ( 0 - 365 )	19
9	weekday Day of the week	Thursday
10	month Month of the year	January
11	0 Timestamp	948370048

Now you have a full control over date and time. You can format this date and time in whatever format you want.

Example

Try the following example below -

<?php
   $date_array = getdate();
   
   foreach ( $date_array as $key => $val ){
      print "$key = $val<br />";
   }
	
   $formated_date  = "Today's date: ";
   $formated_date .= $date_array['mday'] . "/";
   $formated_date .= $date_array['mon'] . "/";
   $formated_date .= $date_array['year'];
   
   print $formated_date;
?>

Output

When the above code is executed, it will produce the following result -

seconds = 50
minutes = 56
hours = 12
mday = 5
wday = 1
mon = 10
year = 2020
yday = 278
weekday = Monday
month = October
0 = 1601902610
Today's date: 5/10/2020

READ: PHP preg_split() Function

Converting a Time Stamp with date() Function

The Php date() function returns a formatted string representing a date. You can exercise a huge amount of control over the style that the PHP date() function returns back with a string argument that you must pass to it.

date(format,  timestamp)

The PHP date() function optionally accepts a time stamp. If it is omitted, then current date and time will be used. Any other date that you include in the format string that is passed to date() function will be included in the return value.

Following table below list all the codes that a format string can hold -

Sr.No	Format & Description	Example
1	a 'am' or 'pm' lowercase	pm
2	A 'AM' or 'PM' uppercase	PM
3	d Day of month, a number with leading zeroes	20
4	D Day of week (three letters)	Thu
5	F Month name	January
6	h Hour (12-hour format - leading zeroes)	12
7	H Hour (24-hour format - leading zeroes)	22
8	g Hour (12-hour format - no leading zeroes)	12
9	G Hour (24-hour format - no leading zeroes)	22
10	i Minutes ( 0 - 59 )	23
11	j Day of the month (no leading zeroes	20
12	l (Lower 'L') Day of the week	Thursday
13	L Leap year ('1' for yes, '0' for no)	1
14	m Month of year (number - leading zeroes)	1
15	M Month of year (three letters)	Jan
16	r The RFC 2822 formatted date	Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200
17	n Month of year (number - no leading zeroes)	2
18	s Seconds of hour	20
19	U Time stamp	948372444
20	y Year (two digits)	06
21	Y Year (four digits)	2006
22	z Day of year (0 - 365)	206
23	Z Offset in seconds from GMT	+5

Example

Try the following example below -

<?php
   print date("m/d/y G.i:s<br>", time());
   echo "<br>";
   print "Today is ";
   print date("j of F Y, \a\\t g.i a", time());
?>

Output

When the above code is executed, it will produce the following result -

10/05/20 13.57:42 
Today is 5 of October 2020, at 1.57 pm
    

READ: PHP preg_match_all() Function

Alright guys! This is where we are rounding up for this tutorial post. In our next tutorial guide, we are going to be discussing about PHP and MySQL.

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