strptime

mktime

Last updated: Fri, 18 Jul 2008

strftime

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

strftime — Format a local time/date according to locale settings

Description

string strftime ( string $format [, int $timestamp ] )

Format a local time/date according to locale settings. Month and weekday names and other language dependent strings respect the current locale set with setlocale().

Not all conversion specifiers may be supported by your C library, in which case they will not be supported by PHP's strftime(). Additionally, not all platforms support negative timestamps, therefore your date range may be limited to no earlier than the Unix epoch. This means that e.g. %e, %T, %R and %D (there might be more) and dates prior to Jan 1, 1970 will not work on Windows, some Linux distributions, and a few other operating systems. For Windows systems a complete overview of supported conversion specifiers can be found at this » MSDN website.

Parameters

format

The following conversion specifiers are recognized in the format string:

%a - abbreviated weekday name according to the current locale
%A - full weekday name according to the current locale
%b - abbreviated month name according to the current locale
%B - full month name according to the current locale
%c - preferred date and time representation for the current locale
%C - century number (the year divided by 100 and truncated to an integer, range 00 to 99)
%d - day of the month as a decimal number (range 01 to 31)
%D - same as %m/%d/%y
%e - day of the month as a decimal number, a single digit is preceded by a space (range ' 1' to '31')
%g - like %G, but without the century.
%G - The 4-digit year corresponding to the ISO week number (see %V). This has the same format and value as %Y, except that if the ISO week number belongs to the previous or next year, that year is used instead.
%h - same as %b
%H - hour as a decimal number using a 24-hour clock (range 00 to 23)
%I - hour as a decimal number using a 12-hour clock (range 01 to 12)
%j - day of the year as a decimal number (range 001 to 366)
%m - month as a decimal number (range 01 to 12)
%M - minute as a decimal number
%n - newline character
%p - either `am' or `pm' according to the given time value, or the corresponding strings for the current locale
%r - time in a.m. and p.m. notation
%R - time in 24 hour notation
%S - second as a decimal number
%t - tab character
%T - current time, equal to %H:%M:%S
%u - weekday as a decimal number [1,7], with 1 representing Monday
Warning
Sun Solaris seems to start with Sunday as 1 although ISO 9889:1999 (the current C standard) clearly specifies that it should be Monday.
%U - week number of the current year as a decimal number, starting with the first Sunday as the first day of the first week
%V - The ISO 8601:1988 week number of the current year as a decimal number, range 01 to 53, where week 1 is the first week that has at least 4 days in the current year, and with Monday as the first day of the week. (Use %G or %g for the year component that corresponds to the week number for the specified timestamp.)
%W - week number of the current year as a decimal number, starting with the first Monday as the first day of the first week
%w - day of the week as a decimal, Sunday being 0
%x - preferred date representation for the current locale without the time
%X - preferred time representation for the current locale without the date
%y - year as a decimal number without a century (range 00 to 99)
%Y - year as a decimal number including the century
%Z or %z - time zone offset or name or abbreviation (Operating System dependent)
%% - a literal `%' character

Maximum length of this parameter is 1023 characters.

timestamp

The optional timestamp parameter is an integer Unix timestamp that defaults to the current local time if a timestamp is not given. In other words, it defaults to the value of time().

Return Values

Returns a string formatted according to the given format string using the given timestamp or the current local time if no timestamp is given. Month and weekday names and other language dependent strings respect the current locale set with setlocale().

Errors/Exceptions

Every call to a date/time function will generate a E_NOTICE if the time zone is not valid, and/or a E_STRICT message if using the system settings or the TZ environment variable. See also date_default_timezone_set()

ChangeLog

Version	Description
5.1.0	Now issues the `E_STRICT` and `E_NOTICE` time zone errors.

Examples

This example works if you have the respective locales installed in your system.

Example #1 strftime() locale examples


<?php
setlocale(LC_TIME, "C");
echo strftime("%A");
setlocale(LC_TIME, "fi_FI");
echo strftime(" in Finnish is %A,");
setlocale(LC_TIME, "fr_FR");
echo strftime(" in French %A and");
setlocale(LC_TIME, "de_DE");
echo strftime(" in German %A.\n");
?>

Example #2 ISO 8601:1988 week number example


<?php
/*     December 2002 / January 2003
ISOWk  M   Tu  W   Thu F   Sa  Su
----- ----------------------------
51     16  17  18  19  20  21  22
52     23  24  25  26  27  28  29
1      30  31   1   2   3   4   5
2       6   7   8   9  10  11  12
3      13  14  15  16  17  18  19   */

// Outputs: 12/28/2002 - %V,%G,%Y = 52,2002,2002
echo "12/28/2002 - %V,%G,%Y = " . strftime("%V,%G,%Y", strtotime("12/28/2002")) . "\n";

// Outputs: 12/30/2002 - %V,%G,%Y = 1,2003,2002
echo "12/30/2002 - %V,%G,%Y = " . strftime("%V,%G,%Y", strtotime("12/30/2002")) . "\n";

// Outputs: 1/3/2003 - %V,%G,%Y = 1,2003,2003
echo "1/3/2003 - %V,%G,%Y = " . strftime("%V,%G,%Y",strtotime("1/3/2003")) . "\n";

// Outputs: 1/10/2003 - %V,%G,%Y = 2,2003,2003
echo "1/10/2003 - %V,%G,%Y = " . strftime("%V,%G,%Y",strtotime("1/10/2003")) . "\n";



/*     December 2004 / January 2005
ISOWk  M   Tu  W   Thu F   Sa  Su
----- ----------------------------
51     13  14  15  16  17  18  19
52     20  21  22  23  24  25  26
53     27  28  29  30  31   1   2
1       3   4   5   6   7   8   9
2      10  11  12  13  14  15  16   */

// Outputs: 12/23/2004 - %V,%G,%Y = 52,2004,2004
echo "12/23/2004 - %V,%G,%Y = " . strftime("%V,%G,%Y",strtotime("12/23/2004")) . "\n";

// Outputs: 12/31/2004 - %V,%G,%Y = 53,2004,2004
echo "12/31/2004 - %V,%G,%Y = " . strftime("%V,%G,%Y",strtotime("12/31/2004")) . "\n";

// Outputs: 1/2/2005 - %V,%G,%Y = 53,2004,2005
echo "1/2/2005 - %V,%G,%Y = " . strftime("%V,%G,%Y",strtotime("1/2/2005")) . "\n";

// Outputs: 1/3/2005 - %V,%G,%Y = 1,2005,2005
echo "1/3/2005 - %V,%G,%Y = " . strftime("%V,%G,%Y",strtotime("1/3/2005")) . "\n";

?>

Notes

Note: %G and %V, which are based on ISO 8601:1988 week numbers can give unexpected (albeit correct) results if the numbering system is not thoroughly understood. See %V examples in this manual page.


Here's a simple version for date formating i use between displaying in HTML and converting back to MYSQL format:





<?php


function format_date($original='', $format="%m/%d/%Y") {


    $format = ($format=='date' ? "%m-%d-%Y" : $format);


    $format = ($format=='datetime' ? "%m-%d-%Y %H:%M:%S" : $format);


    $format = ($format=='mysql-date' ? "%Y-%m-%d" : $format);


    $format = ($format=='mysql-datetime' ? "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" : $format);


    return (!empty($original) ? strftime($format, strtotime($original)) : "" );


}


?>





example (in HTML or webapp):


[grab from database]...


$dbase_stored_date = "2007-03-15";


$display_html_date = format_date($dbase_stored_date);


... displays as "03/15/2007"





example (saving form via on POST/GET):


$update_date = format_date($_POST['display_html_date'], 'mysql-date');


// converts back to '2007-03-15'


.... [your mysql update here]





Don't forget to sanitize your POST/GET's   =)

Anonymous
25-Feb-2008 12:08


%u doesn't work under MS Windows. But getDate()['wday'] works as a perfekt workaround.

Anonymous
23-Feb-2008 07:01


If the second parameter is null, PHP treats it as 0, so strftime return something like 01/01/1970. Be aware of this.

jerome dot place at free dot fr
07-Nov-2007 08:55


Here is a function to convert dates before 1970, very useful if you are still using php 4 (it is supported in php5) :





<?php


# convert a date to special format


# $date is like 2000-01-01 00:00:00 


# $format : refer to strftime function


function convert_date($date,$format) {    


    if($date=='0000-00-00 00:00:00' OR $date=='0000-00-00' OR $date=='' OR $date==NULL) {


        return '';


    }


    else {


        $year=substr($date,0,4);


        if(phpversion() < 5.0 AND $year < 1970) {


            


            $new_date=substr_replace($date,'1980',0,4); # we replace the year by a year after 1970        


            $new_format=eregi_replace('%a|%A|%u','',$format); # we remove days information from the format because they would be wrong


            $new_date=strftime($new_format,strtotime($new_date)); # we convert the date


            $new_date=eregi_replace('1980',$year,$new_date); # we put back the real year


            return $new_date;


        }


        else {


            return strftime($format,strtotime($date));


        }


    }


}


?>

josh dot helzer at gmail dot com
19-Sep-2007 03:39


If strlen($format) >= 1024, the output of strftime($format) is the empty string.

nielsvan den berge at hotmail dot com
31-Aug-2007 02:43


A small function to get the first weekday of the month.

For example the first monday of the month, or the first friday, etc.



<?php  

  /**

   *

   *  Gets the first weekday of that month and year

   *

   *  @param  int   The day of the week (0 = sunday, 1 = monday ... , 6 = saturday)

   *  @param  int   The month (if false use the current month)

   *  @param  int   The year (if false use the current year)

   *

   *  @return int   The timestamp of the first day of that month

   *

   **/  

  function get_first_day($day_number=1, $month=false, $year=false)

  {

    $month  = ($month === false) ? strftime("%m"): $month;

    $year   = ($year === false) ? strftime("%Y"): $year;

    

    $first_day = 1 + ((7+$day_number - strftime("%w", mktime(0,0,0,$month, 1, $year)))%7);

  

    return mktime(0,0,0,$month, $first_day, $year);

  }



// this will output the first wednesday of january 2007 (wed 03-01-2007)

echo strftime("%a %d-%m-%Y", get_first_day(3, 1, 2007)); 

?>

ma
28-Aug-2007 01:58


note, that for some languages you MUST set LC_ALL instead of LC_TIME.



note that you further have to explicitly define your output-encoding (default is ISO-8859-1 [which makes problems for some languages])!



at least i expirienced this behaviour on a german WinXP-PHP4 environment:



<?php



// does not work - gives question marks:

setlocale(LC_TIME, 'RUS'); // ISO Alpha-3 is supported by xp

echo strftime('%A', time());



?>



<?php



// DOES work:

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8'); // you could also use another charset here if iconv isn't installed on your system.



echo setlocale(LC_ALL, 'RUS').': ';

echo iconv('windows-1251', 'UTF-8', strftime('%A', time()))."\n";



?>

ben dot holland at thirdlight dot com
21-Jun-2007 01:03


This little function allows you to provide a reasonably human readable string and convert to a timestamp - see example in comments below.



I find it far more useful than having to remember all the '%' modifiers. Am also well aware of its failings but it works in a lot of the real life situations I've come across.



<?php

function AmazingStringFromTime($str, $nTimestamp = null)

{

    // This function reads a human readable string representation of dates. e.g.

    // DD MM YYYY => 01 07 1978

    // DDD D MMM YY => Mon 1 Jul 78

    

    $arrPairs = array(

    "DDDD"  => "%A",

    "DDD"   => "%a",

    "DD"    => "%d",

    "D"     => "%e", // has leading space: ' 1', ' 2', etc for single digit days

    "MMMM"  => "%B",

    "MMM"   => "%b",

    "MM"    => "%m",

    "YYYY"  => "%Y",

    "YY"    => "%y",

    "HH"    => "%H",

    "hh"    => "%I",

    "mm"    => "%M",

    "ss"    => "%S",

    );

    

    $str = str_replace(array_keys($arrPairs), array_values($arrPairs), $str);

    return strftime($str, $nTimestamp);

}

?>

th1nk3r at gmail dot DELETETHIS dot com
20-Jan-2007 05:35


Function strftime() use the locales installed in your system (linux). 



If you are like me and only leave in the system the locales you use normally (en_US and your own language locale, like es_ES), you'll only be able to use the locales installed. If your application is translated to other languages, you need these locales too.



The name of the locale in your system is important too. This can be a problem when you want to distribute the app.



If you have this locales in your system:

en_US/ISO-8859-1

en_US.UTF-8/UTF-8

es_ES/ISO-8859-1

es_ES@euro/ISO-8859-15

es_ES.UTF-8/UTF-8

es_ES@euro/UTF-8



and use setlocale('es_ES'), the result will use the iso-8859-1 charset even if you have all your system, files and configuration options in UTF-8. To receive content in UTF-8, in this example, you need to use setlocale('es_ES.UTF-8') or setlocale('es_ES.UTF-8@UTF-8').



The definition of locales can change from one system to another, and so the charset from the results.

denis at spiralsolutions dot com
02-Nov-2006 08:07


(in addition to Andy's post)


To get a RFC 2822 date (used in RSS) of the current local time :





echo strftime ("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z") ;





Note: option %z / %Z - work different on Windows platform, for example


output of this code line can be:


Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:54:59 Jerusalem Standard Time (on Windows)


Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:54:59 +0200                   (on Linux)





[red. It is much smarter to use date(DATE_RSS); here]

Moritz Stoltenburg
17-Aug-2006 04:45


In response to the note supplied by "Arpad Borsos":



I think the whole truth is that the output of strftime() considers whatever you stated with setlocale().



<?php



/* Berlin is in Germany */

$locale = setlocale (LC_ALL, 'de_DE.UTF-8');



/* Output: Donnerstag, 23. März 2006 (and hopefully UTF-8 ;) */

echo strftime ("%A, %d. %B %Y", strtotime('2006-03-23'));



/* try different possible locale names for german as of PHP 4.3.0 */

$locale = setlocale(LC_ALL, 'de_DE.UTF-8', 'de_DE.UTF-8@euro', 'de_DE');

echo "Preferred locale for german on this system is '$locale'";



?>



Check the documentation of setlocale() for more.

setlocale (LC_ALL, 'de_DE.UTF-8') always worked fine for me.

Arpad Borsos
17-Aug-2006 12:32


Please note that the strftime output is not encoded in utf8 so you have to use utf8_encode() if you want to print localized month names e.g. for German "März"





[red. this depends on the platform though - some Windows locales *do* use UTF-8 for example]

reeveboy at hotmail dot com
27-Jul-2006 05:01


To mcallister, phloe and anyone else who want to get on the getDaySuffix() band wagon:





There are already functions to do this. All you really have to do is: 





<?php echo date("jS", mktime(0,0,0,1,$myDay,2006)); ?>





Obviously, the only part of mktime that really matters is $myDay.

Moritz Stoltenburg
22-Jul-2006 06:54


In response to the note supplied by "segfault nycap rr com".



Here is a quicker and easier way:



Use the MySQL Time Function TIME_FORMAT() in your query:



mysql> SELECT TIME_FORMAT('14:35:00', '%l:%i %p');



Or try '%l' in PHP, it works on most systems and is part of the Open Group specification of strftime().



<?php



echo strftime('%l:%M %p', strtotime('14:35:00'));



?>

andy at yatescentral dot com
16-May-2006 04:47


When using strftime to generate time stamps for inclusion in  RSS feeds, be sure to use %z for the timezone (RFC-822 format) rather than %Z -- for some reason, %Z fails to validate.

posenato at sciNO dot univrSPAM dot it
15-May-2006 07:37


To partialy correct Neo's on RFC 850 date...





RFC 850 is obsolete by RFC 1036.





In HTTP header, RFC 1123 is the first choice: it has a fixed length format and 4 digits year.





Therefore, the correct format is: 





gmstrftime ("%a, %d %b %Y %T %Z", time ());





Output example: Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT





[red. Use date(DATE_RFC850, time()); instead. (Or DATE_RFC1123 or DATE_RFC1036)]

Jon Keating
18-Jan-2006 01:49


Under windows if you are using Japanese version, you must use the following code:



setlocale(LC_ALL, "Japanese_Japan.20932") for EUC

setlocale(LC_ALL, "Japanese_Japan.932") for SJIS



I found the following page that helped me with this issue:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=8329

php at REMOVEMEkennel17 dot co dot uk
20-Dec-2005 12:29


To correct an error in the above list of formatting codes:



%p - either `AM' or `PM' according to the given time value, or the corresponding strings for the current locale (note result is in capitals)

%P - either `am' or `pm' according to the given time value, or the corresponding strings for the current locale (note result is in lower case)



In addition, the following codes seem to return a value on my system (Linux, Apache/1.3.33, PHP/4.4.1), but are not documented above.  I have included the result given by passing them to gmstrftime() with a timestamp of 0 (unix epoch).  gmstrftime() was used to avoid timezone/DST differences.



%F: "1970-01-01" (appears to be an SQL-formatted version of the date)

%k: "0" (seems to be the hour in 24-hour clock, without leading zeros (space-padded))

%l: "12" (seems to be the hour in 12-hour clock, without leading zeros (space-padded))

%s: "-3600" 



%s seems to be the Unix timestamp passed to the function, but somehow based on the current locale/TZ settings (even in gmstrftime()).  

On my system strftime("%H:%M:%S", 0) returns "01:00:00", and strftime("%s", 0) returns "0".  Using gmstrftime() I get "00:00:00" and "-3600" respectively.

jw at jwscripts dot com
29-May-2005 02:32


The following function implements the conversion specifiers which are not supported on Win32 platforms:



(Note: the specifiers %V, %G and %g can be implemented using other functions described in this section)



<?php



function strftime_win32($format, $ts = null) {

    if (!$ts) $ts = time();



    $mapping = array(

        '%C' => sprintf("%02d", date("Y", $ts) / 100),

        '%D' => '%m/%d/%y',

        '%e' => sprintf("%' 2d", date("j", $ts)),

        '%h' => '%b',

        '%n' => "\n",

        '%r' => date("h:i:s", $ts) . " %p",

        '%R' => date("H:i", $ts),

        '%t' => "\t",

        '%T' => '%H:%M:%S',

        '%u' => ($w = date("w", $ts)) ? $w : 7

    );

    $format = str_replace(

        array_keys($mapping),

        array_values($mapping),

        $format

    );



    return strftime($format, $ts);

}



?>

patrick at codeministry dot dk
20-Apr-2005 10:50


For freebsd user:



You can find the full list of your locale under /usr/share/locale.

For example da_DK.ISO8859-1 under this directory will set up the locale to danish.

bohac at smartcat dot cz
19-Mar-2005 06:36


i had to use the czech representation of time on unix machine, running debian and linux version of apache with php 4





for me the best solution was to use this code:





<?php


     setlocale(LC_ALL, 'cs_CZ.iso88592');


?>





then you can do everything in czech language with correct iso-8859-2 encoding ;D

Aaron
25-Jan-2005 09:10


%k will give you %H (hour, 24-hour clock) with the leading zero replaced by a space.  I have only tested this on one linux system so far, it may not work on windows or other linux builds.

michiel1978 at hotmail dot com
06-Oct-2004 10:31


As said in these comments, Windows strftime() doesn't support %e. However, to achieve a similar effect (not 100%) you can use %#d. The # flag will remove the leading zero, so you do get single digits, but without the space that would be added by %e in other environments.

neo at gothic-chat d0t de
25-Jun-2004 07:27


To get a RFC 850 date (used in HTTP) of the current time:



gmstrftime ("%A %d-%b-%y %T %Z", time ());



This will get for example:

Friday 25-Jun-04 03:30:23 GMT



Please note that times in HTTP-headers _must_ be GMT, so use gmstrftime() instead of strftime().

adan at cr72 dot com
10-Jun-2004 12:48


For Spanish:


<?php


setlocale(LC_ALL, "sp");


echo strftime("%d. %B %Y");


?>

vminarik at ips-ag dot cz
10-Sep-2001 02:02


Note that setting LC_TIME is not enough for some locales under Windows, e.g. Czech, because there are some characters not contained in default (US) character set like '�' (c with hook), '�' (r with hook).








If you run Apache as regular application and have set your locale to Czech (ControlPanel/RegionalOptions), there is no problem and 'September' is correctly translated as 'z���', 'Thursday' as '�tvrtek'.


But if you run Apache as service, you get 'z�r�', and 'ctvrtek'.


To get things work as you expect you must set LC_CTYPE beside LC_TIME, or set LC_ALL.





<?php


  $locale = 'Czech_Czech.1250';


  $res = setlocale( 'LC_CTYPE', $locale); //important


  $res = setlocale( 'LC_TIME', $locale);


  echo strftime( '%A %m. %B %Y', mktime( 0,0,0,9,6,2001));


?>

verdy_p at wanadoo dot fr
22-Jul-2001 01:33


Beware of '%D':


the comment shown expects that this is the same as '%m/%d/%y'.





This is wrong: '%D' is only expected to returned an abbreviated numeric date according to the current locale:


In the German locale '%D' is '%y.%m.%d'


In the French locale '%D' is '%d/%m/%y'





The locale rules still apply to %D as with '%A'...





Beware that some C libraries do not support '%D' and/or '%A'  or do not support them accordingly. Using strftime() is then system-dependant, because PHP use the C function provided by the system on which it runs.

spamyenot at example dot com
18-Jul-2001 07:09


Solaris 2.6 and 7 define the


%u specifier differently than noted here. Day 1 is Sunday, not Monday. Solaris 8 gets it right.





Jim

zmajeed at cup dot hp dot com
22-Jul-1999 11:14


Locale names are OS dependent. HP-UX 11.0, for example, has three


German locales, de_DE.roman8, de_DE.iso88591, and 


de_DE.iso885915@euro.


The command locale -a will display all available locales on a system.





So on HP-UX, to get German dates: 


setlocale("LC_TIME", "de_DE.roman8");


print(strftime("%A\n"));

add a note