PHP Date () function

The date () function of PHP is used to format the time or date.

PHP Date () function

The PHP date () function formats the timestamp as a date and time that is more readable.

Grammar

Date (Format,timestamp)

Parameter description

Format required. Specifies the format of the timestamp.

Timestamp is optional. Time stamp is specified. The default is the current date and time.

PHP Date-What is a timestamp (Timestamp)?

The timestamp is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 (00:00:00 GMT). It is also known as the Unix timestamp (Unix Timestamp).

PHP Date-formatted date

The first parameter of the date () function specifies how the date/time is formatted. It uses letters to represent the format of dates and times. Some of the available letters are listed here:

D-Day of the month (01-31)

M-Current month, measured in digital (01-12)

Y-Current year (four digits)

You can find all the letters you can use in the format parameters in our PHP Date reference manual.

You can insert additional characters between letters, such as "/", ".", or "-" to add additional formatting:

<?php
echo Date ("y/m/d");
echo "<br/>";
echo Date ("Y.M.D");
echo "<br/>";
echo Date ("y-m-d");
?>

The output of the above code is similar to this:

2006/07/11
2006.07.11
2006-07-11

PHP Date-Add timestamp

The second parameter of the date () function specifies a timestamp. This parameter is optional. If you do not provide a timestamp, the current time will be used.

In our example, we will use the Mktime () function to create a timestamp for tomorrow.

The Mktime () function returns the Unix timestamp for the specified date.

Grammar

Mktime (HOUR,MINUTE,SECOND,MONTH,DAY,YEAR,IS_DST)

To get a timestamp for a given day, we just set the Mktime () function to the time parameter:

<?php
$tomorrow = Mktime (0,0,0,date ("M"), Date ("D") +1,date ("Y"));
echo "Tomorrow is". Date ("y/m/d", $tomorrow);
?>

The output of the above code is similar to this:

Tomorrow is 2006/07/12.

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