PHP Date Format Cheat Sheet

November 29th, 2007

Please consult the original documentation for examples and more information.

Usage Example:
$format = "'l M j, y \a\t g:iA'";
date($format, strtotime($date_str)

Result: “Thursday Nov 29, 07 at 2:09PM”

Format Character Description Example returned values
Hour
H 24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros 00 through 23
G 24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros 0 through 23
h 12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros 01 through 12
g 12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros 1 through 12
a Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem am or pm
A Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem AM or PM
Minutes and seconds
i Minutes with leading zeros 00 to 59
s Seconds, with leading zeros 00 through 59
Timezone
O Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours Example: +0200
Z Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is always negative, and for those east of UTC is always positive. -43200 through 43200
T Timezone setting of this machine Examples: EST, MDT
I (capital i) Whether or not the date is in daylights savings time 1 if Daylight Savings Time, 0 otherwise.
Day of week
l (lowercase ‘L’) A full textual representation of the day of the week Sunday through Saturday
D A textual representation of a day, three letters Mon through Sun
w Numeric representation of the day of the week 0 (for Sunday) through 6 (for Saturday)
Day of month
d Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros 01 to 31
j Day of the month without leading zeros 1 to 31
S English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j
t Number of days in the given month 28 through 31
Month
F A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March January through December
M A short textual representation of a month, three letters Jan through Dec
m Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros 01 through 12
n Numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros 1 through 12
Year
Y A full numeric representation of a year, 4 digits Examples: 1999 or 2003
y A two digit representation of a year Examples: 99 or 03
L Whether it’s a leap year 1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise.
W ISO-8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday (added in PHP 4.1.0) Example: 42 (the 42nd week in the year)
z The day of the year (starting from 0) 0 through 365
Preformatted
r RFC 2822 formatted date. Equivalent to ‘D, j M Y H:i:s O’. Example: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200
U Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) See also time()
B Swatch Internet time 000 through 999

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