DateTimeInterface::format DateTimeImmutable::format DateTime::format date_format Returns date formatted according to given format &reftitle.description; &style.oop; public stringDateTimeInterface::format stringformat public stringDateTimeImmutable::format stringformat public stringDateTime::format stringformat &style.procedural; stringdate_format DateTimeInterfaceobject stringformat Returns date formatted according to given format. &reftitle.parameters; &date.datetime.description; format The format of the outputted date string. See the formatting options below. There are also several predefined date constants that may be used instead, so for example DATE_RSS contains the format string 'D, d M Y H:i:s'. format character Description Example returned values Day --- --- d Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros 01 to 31 D A textual representation of a day, three letters Mon through Sun j Day of the month without leading zeros 1 to 31 l (lowercase 'L') A full textual representation of the day of the week Sunday through Saturday N ISO 8601 numeric representation of the day of the week 1 (for Monday) through 7 (for Sunday) S English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j w Numeric representation of the day of the week 0 (for Sunday) through 6 (for Saturday) z The day of the year (starting from 0) 0 through 365 Week --- --- W ISO 8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday Example: 42 (the 42nd week in the year) Month --- --- F A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March January through December m Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros 01 through 12 M A short textual representation of a month, three letters Jan through Dec n Numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros 1 through 12 t Number of days in the given month 28 through 31 Year --- --- L Whether it's a leap year 1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise. o ISO 8601 week-numbering year. This has the same value as Y, except that if the ISO week number (W) belongs to the previous or next year, that year is used instead. Examples: 1999 or 2003 X An expanded full numeric representation of a year, at least 4 digits, with - for years BCE, and + for years CE. Examples: -0055, +0787, +1999, +10191 x An expanded full numeric representation if requried, or a standard full numeral representation if possible (like Y). At least four digits. Years BCE are prefixed with a -. Years beyond (and including) 10000 are prefixed by a +. Examples: -0055, 0787, 1999, +10191 Y A full numeric representation of a year, at least 4 digits, with - for years BCE. Examples: -0055, 0787, 1999, 2003, 10191 y A two digit representation of a year Examples: 99 or 03 Time --- --- a Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem am or pm A Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem AM or PM B Swatch Internet time 000 through 999 g 12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros 1 through 12 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 H 24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros 00 through 23 i Minutes with leading zeros 00 to 59 s Seconds with leading zeros 00 through 59 u Microseconds. Note that date will always generate 000000 since it takes an int parameter, whereas DateTime::format does support microseconds if DateTime was created with microseconds. Example: 654321 v Milliseconds. Same note applies as for u. Example: 654 Timezone --- --- e Timezone identifier Examples: UTC, GMT, Atlantic/Azores I (capital i) Whether or not the date is in daylight saving time 1 if Daylight Saving Time, 0 otherwise. O Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) without colon between hours and minutes Example: +0200 P Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes Example: +02:00 p The same as P, but returns Z instead of +00:00 (available as of PHP 8.0.0) Examples: Z or +02:00 T Timezone abbreviation, if known; otherwise the GMT offset. Examples: EST, MDT, +05 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 50400 Full Date/Time --- --- c ISO 8601 date 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00 r RFC 2822/RFC 5322 formatted date 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 Unrecognized characters in the format string will be printed as-is. The Z format will always return 0 when using gmdate. Since this function only accepts int timestamps the u format character is only useful when using the date_format function with user based timestamps created with date_create. &reftitle.returnvalues; Returns the formatted date string on success. &reftitle.changelog; &Version; &Description; 8.2.0 The format characters X and x have been added. 8.0.0 Prior to this version, &false; was returned on failure. 8.0.0 The format character p has been added. &reftitle.examples; &style.oop; format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); ?> ]]> &style.procedural; ]]> &example.outputs; format('l'), "\n"; // Prints something like: Wednesday 19th of October 2022 08:40:48 AM echo $date->format('l jS \o\f F Y h:i:s A'), "\n"; /* use the constants in the format parameter */ // prints something like: Wed, 19 Oct 2022 08:40:48 +0000 echo $date->format(DateTimeInterface::RFC2822), "\n"; ?> ]]> You can prevent a recognized character in the format string from being expanded by escaping it with a preceding backslash. If the character with a backslash is already a special sequence, you may need to also escape the backslash. format('l \t\h\e jS'); ?> ]]> To format dates in other languages, IntlDateFormatter::format can be used instead of DateTimeInterface::format. &reftitle.notes; This method does not use locales. All output is in English. &reftitle.seealso; IntlDateFormatter::format