PHP How to use date and time

Dates are so much part of everyday life that it becomes easy to work with them without thinking. PHP also provides powerful tools for date arithmetic that make manipulating dates easy.

Getting the Time Stamp with time():

PHP's time() function gives you all the information that you need about the current date and time. It requires no arguments but returns an integer.
The integer returned by time() represents the number of seconds elapsed since midnight GMT on January 1, 1970. This moment is known as the UNIX epoch, and the number of seconds that have elapsed since then is referred to as a time stamp.
<?php
print time();
?>
It will produce following result:
948316201
This is something difficult to understand. But PHP offers excellent tools to convert a time stamp into a form that humans are comfortable with.

Converting a Time Stamp with getdate():

The function getdate() optionally accepts a time stamp and returns an associative array containing information about the date. If you omit the time stamp, it works with the current time stamp as returned by time().
Following table lists the elements contained in the array returned by getdate().
KeyDescriptionExample
secondsSeconds past the minutes (0-59)20
minutesMinutes past the hour (0 - 59)29
hoursHours of the day (0 - 23)22
mdayDay of the month (1 - 31)11
wdayDay of the week (0 - 6)4
monMonth of the year (1 - 12)7
yearYear (4 digits)1997
ydayDay of year ( 0 - 365 )19
weekdayDay of the weekThursday
monthMonth of the yearJanuary
0Timestamp948370048
Now you have complete control over date and time. You can format this date and time in whatever format you wan.

Example:

Try out following example
<?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;
?>
It will produce following result:
seconds = 27
minutes = 25
hours = 11
mday = 12
wday = 6
mon = 5
year = 2007
yday = 131
weekday = Saturday
month = May
0 = 1178994327
Today's date: 12/5/2007

Converting a Time Stamp with date():

The date() function returns a formatted string representing a date. You can exercise an enormous amount of control over the format that date() returns with a string argument that you must pass to it.
date(format,timestamp)
The date() optionally accepts a time stamp if ommited then current date and time will be used. Any other data you include in the format string passed to date() will be included in the return value.
Following table lists the codes that a format string can contain:
FormatDescriptionExample
a'am' or 'pm' lowercasepm
A'AM' or 'PM' uppercasePM
dDay of month, a number with leading zeroes20
DDay of week (three letters)Thu
FMonth nameJanuary
hHour (12-hour format - leading zeroes)12
HHour (24-hour format - leading zeroes)22
gHour (12-hour format - no leading zeroes)12
GHour (24-hour format - no leading zeroes)22
iMinutes ( 0 - 59 )23
jDay of the month (no leading zeroes20
l (Lower 'L')Day of the weekThursday
LLeap year ('1' for yes, '0' for no)1
mMonth of year (number - leading zeroes)1
MMonth of year (three letters)Jan
rThe RFC 2822 formatted dateThu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200
nMonth of year (number - no leading zeroes)2
sSeconds of hour20
UTime stamp948372444
yYear (two digits)06
YYear (four digits)2006
zDay of year (0 - 365)206
ZOffset in seconds from GMT+5

Example:

Try out following example
<?php
print date("m/d/y G.i:s<br>", time());
print "Today is ";
print date("j of F Y, \a\\t g.i a", time());
?>
It will produce following result:
01/20/00 13.27:55
Today is 20 of January 2000, at 1.27 pm

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