PHP allows you to use many date functions along with many modifiers that help you to perform some operations on a date. You can even manipulate date using PHP date and time functions. Use of time() function If you want all the information about the current date and time, then PHP helps you with time() function. This function does not take any argument and returns an integer value regarding the date and time. This returned integer value denotes the number of seconds that has been elapsed since midnight GMT on January 1, 1970, which is referred to as the timestamp.
Example-
<?php echo time(); ?>
Output
1591771649
How to convert the timestamp value with getdate()
PHP allows the use of getdate() function that takes the timestamp as the argument and provide the information about the date which is contained in an associative array. Below is the list of all elements that are returned by getdate() function in an array-
| Key | Description | Example |
| seconds | Represents the second of the time(0-59) | 25 |
| minutes | Represents the minutes past the hour(0-59) | 30 |
| hours | Represents the hour’s element(0-23) | 14 |
| mday | Represents the day of the month(1-31) | 16 |
| wday | Represents the day of the week(0-6) | 6 |
| mon | Represents the month of the year(1-12) | 10 |
| year | Represents the year(4 digits) | 2020 |
| yday | Represents the day of the year(0-356) | 40 |
| weekday | Represents the day of the week | Monday |
| month | Represents the month of the year | February |
| 0 | Represents the time stamp | 1591771649 |
Example
<?php
$date_val = getdate();
foreach ( $date_val as $date => $var ){
echo "$date = $var";
echo "<br>"; }
?>
Output
seconds = 19 minutes = 2 hours = 7 mday = 10 wday = 3 mon = 6 year = 2020 yday = 161 weekday = Wednesday month = June 0 = 1591772539
How to convert a timestamp with date() function
PHP allows you to format the date using the date() function. This function can be provided with two parameters, one is the format string and other is the timestamp. If the timestamp is not provided then the function will use the current date and time for evaluation.
date(format, timestamp)
Below is the list of format elements that can be used within the date function-
| Key | Description | Example |
| a | Represents the ‘am’ or ‘pm’ in lowercase | am |
| A | Represents the ‘AM’ or ‘PM’ in uppercase | PM |
| d | Represents the day of the month | 03 |
| D | Represents the day of the week(3 letters) | Wed |
| F | Represents the month name | February |
| h | Represents the hour(12-hour format), leading zeros | 04 |
| H | Represents the hour(24-hour format), leading zeros | 18 |
| g | Represents the hour(12-hour format), no-leading zeros | 12 |
| G | Represents the hour(24-hour format), no-leading zeros | 18 |
| i | Represents the minutes(0-59) | 26 |
| j | Represents the day of the month with no leading zeros | 20 |
| l | Represents the day of the week | Monday |
| L | Represents the leap year (1- yes, 0-no) | 0 |
| m | Represents the month of the year in number with leading zeros | 2 |
| M | Represents the month of the year (3 letters) | Feb |
| r | Represents the RFC 2822 formatted date | Thu, 21 Dec 2020 16:01:07 +0200 |
| n | Represents the month of the year with no leading zeros | 4 |
| s | Represents the second of the hour | 27 |
| U | Represents the timestamp | 1591772539 |
| y | Represents the year(two-digit) | 04 |
| Y | Represents the year in four digits | 2020 |
| z | Represents the day of the year(0-365) | 280 |
| Z | Represents the offset in seconds from GMT | +3 |
Example
<?php
print date("m/d/y G.i:s<br>", time());
echo "<br>";
print "Today's Date is ";
print date("j of F Y, a\t g.i a", time());
?>
Output
06/10/20 7.19:59 Today's Date is 10 2020f June 2020, at 7.19 am
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