PHP 5 Date and Time

PHP date function is an in-built function that simplify working with date data types. The PHP date function is used to format a date or time into a human readable format. It can be used to display the date of article was published. record the last updated a data in a database.

PHP Date Syntax

PHP set Timezone Programmatically

The date_default_timezone_set function allows you to set the default time zone from a PHP script.

“date_default_timezone_set()” is the function that sets the default time zone

“string $timezone_identifier” is the time zone identifier

The script below displays the time according to the default time zone set in php.ini.

It then changes the default time zone to Asia/Calcutta and displays the time again.

Example -

<?php echo "The time in " . date_default_timezone_get() . " is " . date("H:i:s"); date_default_timezone_set("Asia/Calcutta"); echo "The time in " . date_default_timezone_get() . " is " . date("H:i:s"); ?>

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Getting a list of available time zone identifiers

Before we look at how to set the default time zone programmatically, let’s look at how to get a list of supported time zones.

Example -

<?php $timezone_identifiers = DateTimeZone::listIdentifiers(); foreach($timezone_identifiers as $key => $list){ echo $list . "<br/>"; } ?>

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Example -

<?php $d1=strtotime("July 04"); $d2=ceil(($d1-time())/60/60/24); echo "There are " . $d2 ." days until 4th of July."; ?>

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