PHP Date Function Hints and Tips – Cheat Sheet, Examples!
by TrentonD on Dec.24, 2010, under Cheat Sheets, PHP, Tutorials
Today we are going to learn how to use the PHP Date function. It really is a simple function, but there are a lot of parameters that can be used which may make it harder for people to catch on to right away. I hope that with this tutorial, it will make the function a little easier to understand by providing visual examples. Lets begin!
Here is what a simple Date Function looks like:
<?php echo date(“F, j Y”); ?>
That will echo something similar to this:
December 24, 2010F, j, and Y are three of the many format characters you can use to define what you want to display. Below, I have included a chart that shows you what the most-used characters display, with an example.
| d | 2 Digit numerical representation of the day, with leading zero | 01, 15, 31 |
| j | Numerical representation of the day, without leading zero | 1, 15, 31 |
| S | Two digit suffix for the day | st, nd, rd, th |
| l * | Full textual representation of the day | Monday, Saturday |
| D | Three letter textual representation of the day | Mon, Sat |
| m | Numeric representation of the month, with leading zero | 01, 06, 12 |
| n | Numeric representation of the month, without leading zero | 1, 6, 12 |
| F | Full textual representation of the month | January, June, December |
| M | Three letter textual representation of the month | Jan, Jun, Dec |
| Y | Four digit numerical representation of the year | 1999, 2006, 2010 |
| y | Two digit numerical representation of the year | 99, 06, 10 |
* Lowercase “L”, not an “i”
Below are some examples using the information in the chart above:
Friday, December 24th 2010
<?php echo date(“l, F jS Y”); ?>
12-24-2010
<?php echo date(“m-j-Y”); ?>
Please take note that capitalization does matter, and that if you include any other letters, you must escape the characters with a “\”, as seen below.
December the 24th
<?php echo date(“F \\t\h\e jS”) ?>
And there you have it! A quick, simple tutorial on how the php date function works. Feel free to use what I have provided as a stepping stone, but make sure you experiment and test out other format characters as well! As always, thank you for reading and feel free to post any comments or questions 
