The date() function formats a local date and time, and returns the formatted date string.Returns a string formatted according to the given format string using the given integer timestamp or the current time if no timestamp is given. In other words, timestamp is optional and defaults to the value of time().
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Format | The following characters can be used: |
| d | The day of the month (from 01 to 31) |
| D | A textual representation of a day, three letters |
| j | Day of the month without leading zeros |
| I | (lowercase 'L') - A full textual representation of a day |
| N | The ISO-8601 numeric representation of a day (1 for Monday, 7 for Sunday) |
| S | The English ordinal suffix for the day of the month (2 characters st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j) |
| w | A numeric representation of the day (0 for Sunday, 6 for Saturday) |
| z | The day of the year (from 0 through 365) |
| W | The ISO-8601 week number of year (weeks starting on Monday) |
| F | A full textual representation of a month (January through December) |
| m | A numeric representation of a month (from 01 to 12) |
| M | A short textual representation of a month (three letters) |
| n | A numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros (1 to 12) |
| t | The number of days in the given month |
| L | Whether it's a leap year (1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise) |
| L | Whether it's a leap year (1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise) |
| o | The ISO-8601 year number |
| Y | A four digit representation of a year |
| y | A two digit representation of a year |
| a | Lowercase am or pm |
| A | Uppercase AM or PM |
| B | Swatch Internet time (000 to 999) |
| g | 12-hour format of an hour (1 to 12) |
| G | 24-hour format of an hour (0 to 23) |
| h | 12-hour format of an hour (01 to 12) |
| H | 24-hour format of an hour (00 to 23) |
| i | Minutes with leading zeros (00 to 59) |
| s | Seconds, with leading zeros (00 to 59) |
| u | Microseconds (added in PHP 5.2.2) |
| e | The timezone identifier (Examples: UTC, GMT, Atlantic/Azores) |
| I | (capital i) - Whether the date is in daylights savings time (1 if Daylight Savings Time, 0 otherwise) |
| O | Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours (Example: +0100) |
| P | Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours:minutes (added in PHP 5.1.3) |
| T | Timezone abbreviations (Examples: EST, MDT) |
| Z | Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is negative (-43200 to 50400) |
| c | The ISO-8601 date (e.g. 2013-05-05T16:34:42+00:00) |
| r | The RFC 2822 formatted date (e.g. Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:01:05 +0200) |
| U | The seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) |
and the following predefined constants can also be used (available since PHP 5.1.0):
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| DATE_ATOM | Atom (example: 2013-04-12T15:52:01+00:00) |
| DATE_COOKIE | HTTP Cookies (example: Friday, 12-Apr-13 15:52:01 UTC) |
| DATE_ISO8601 | ISO-8601 (example: 2013-04-12T15:52:01+0000) |
| DATE_RFC822 | RFC 822 (example: Fri, 12 Apr 13 15:52:01 +0000) |
| DATE_RFC850 | RFC 850 (example: Friday, 12-Apr-13 15:52:01 UTC) |
| DATE_RFC1036 | RFC 1036 (example: Fri, 12 Apr 13 15:52:01 +0000) |
| DATE_RFC1123 | RFC 1123 (example: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:52:01 +0000) |
| DATE_RFC2822 | RFC 2822 (Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:52:01 +0000) |
| DATE_RFC3339 | Same as DATE_ATOM (since PHP 5.1.3) |
| DATE_RSS | RSS (Fri, 12 Aug 2013 15:52:01 +0000) |
| DATE_W3C | World Wide Web Consortium (example: 2013-04-12T15:52:01+00:00) |