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PHP Date / Time Functions

PHP Date / Time Introduction

The date/time functions allow you to extract and format the date and time on the server.

Note: These functions depend on the locale settings of the server!

Installation

The date/time functions are part of the PHP core. There is no installation needed to use these functions.

Runtime Configuration

The behavior of the date/time functions is affected by settings in php.ini.

Date/Time configuration options:

Name Default Description Changeable
date.default_latitude  "31.7667" Specifies the default latitude (available since PHP 5). This option is used by date_sunrise() and date_sunset() PHP_INI_ALL
date.default_longitude "35.2333" Specifies the default longitude (available since PHP 5). This option is used by date_sunrise() and date_sunset() PHP_INI_ALL
date.sunrise_zenith "90.83" Specifies the default sunrise zenith (available since PHP 5). This option is used by date_sunrise() and date_sunset() PHP_INI_ALL
date.sunset_zenith "90.83" Specifies the default sunset zenith (available since PHP 5). This option is used by date_sunrise() and date_sunset() PHP_INI_ALL
date.timezone "" Specifies the default timezone (available since PHP 5.1) PHP_INI_ALL

PHP Date / Time Functions

PHP: indicates the earliest version of PHP that supports the function.

Function Description PHP
checkdate() Validates a Gregorian date 3
date_default_timezone_get() Returns the default time zone 5
date_default_timezone_set() Sets the default time zone 5
date_sunrise() Returns the time of sunrise for a given day / location 5
date_sunset() Returns the time of sunset for a given day / location 5
date() Formats a local time/date 3
getdate() Returns an array that contains date and time information for a Unix timestamp 3
gettimeofday() Returns an array that contains current time information 3
gmdate() Formats a GMT/UTC date/time 3
gmmktime() Returns the Unix timestamp for a GMT date 3
gmstrftime() Formats a GMT/UTC time/date according to locale settings 3
idate() Formats a local time/date as integer 5
localtime() Returns an array that contains the time components of a Unix timestamp 4
microtime() Returns the microseconds for the current time 3
mktime() Returns the Unix timestamp for a date 3
strftime() Formats a local time/date according to locale settings 3
strptime() Parses a time/date generated with strftime() 5
strtotime() Parses an English textual date or time into a Unix timestamp 3
time() Returns the current time as a Unix timestamp 3

PHP Date / Time Constants

PHP: indicates the earliest version of PHP that supports the constant.

Constant Description PHP
DATE_ATOM Atom (example: 2005-08-15T16:13:03+0000)  
DATE_COOKIE HTTP Cookies (example: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:13:03 UTC)  
DATE_ISO8601 ISO-8601 (example: 2005-08-14T16:13:03+0000)  
DATE_RFC822 RFC 822 (example: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:13:03 UTC)  
DATE_RFC850 RFC 850 (example: Sunday, 14-Aug-05 16:13:03 UTC)  
DATE_RFC1036 RFC 1036 (example: Sunday, 14-Aug-05 16:13:03 UTC)  
DATE_RFC1123 RFC 1123 (example: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:13:03 UTC)  
DATE_RFC2822 RFC 2822 (Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:13:03 +0000)  
DATE_RSS RSS (Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:13:03 UTC)  
DATE_W3C World Wide Web Consortium (example: 2005-08-14T16:13:03+0000)  

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