Formatting dates
Use these codes to format the date as you like. If you want to use a plain word (like 'of' or 'the') you must escape each letter of the word with a backslash to keep PHP happy ('\o\f' and '\t\h\e'). For example, to get "Saturday, the 22nd of October, 2005" you would enter
l, \t\h\e jS \o\f F, Y
- Year
- Y: 2005
- y: 05
- Month
- n: 4 (as one or two digits)
- m: 04 (as two digits)
- F: April
- M: Apr
- Day of the year
- z: 0-365
- Day of the month
- S: st/nd/rd/th (two-digit ordinal suffix [e.g. 1st of...])
- j: 9 (one or two digits)
- d: 09 (two digits)
- t: 28-31 (number of days in given month)
- Day of the week
- l (small L): Monday
- D: Mon
- w: 0-6 (0 is Sunday)
- Hour
- g: 7 (12-hour format with one or two digits)
- G: 19 (24-hour format with two digits)
- h: 07 (12-hour format with one or two digits)
- H: 19 (24-hour format with two digits)
- Misc time
- i: 45 (minutes)
- a: am/pm
- A: AM/PM
- s: 12 (seconds)
- U: 1129596111 (seconds since the 1st of January, 1970)
It's always better to show the year as four digits and the month non-numerically because it reduces confusion: lots of people have trouble with an ambiguous date like 06-10-05 because it can be construed as:
- 6th of October, 2005 (DMY, mainly British)
- June the 10th, 2005 (MDY, mainly American)
- 2006, October the 5th (YMD, Zulu (international date/time))
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