Sign Up

Tierra Hosting

Home ⁄ Guides ⁄ Working with Dates and Times in PHP

Working with Dates and Times in PHP

PHP Functions for Novice Users

In this post, we will dive into handling dates and times in PHP, which is a common requirement in many web applications. PHP provides several built-in functions to work with dates and times effectively.

Working with dates and times is a fundamental aspect of web development. PHP provides built-in functions such as date() and strtotime() that allow you to manipulate and format dates and times easily.

You can use date() function to display the current date and time, or format a specific date in various ways. For example:
<?php
// Display current date and time
echo "Today is: " . date("Y-m-d H:i:s") . "<br>";

// Display a formatted date
$date = strtotime("2023-04-15");
echo "Formatted date: " . date("M d, Y", $date);
?>
Using strtotime() function, you can convert a string representation of a date or time into a Unix timestamp, which can then be used with other date and time functions. For example: 
<?php
// Convert string to Unix timestamp
$date_str = "2023-04-20";
$timestamp = strtotime($date_str);

// Format the timestamp
echo "Timestamp: " . $timestamp . "<br>";
echo "Formatted date: " . date("M d, Y", $timestamp);
?>

These are just some of the basic functions available in PHP for working with dates and times. By mastering these functions, you can easily handle various date and time-related tasks in your web applications.