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strptime> <mktime
Last updated: Sun, 25 Nov 2007

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strftime

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

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

Beskrivelse

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

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().

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.

Parameterliste

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 or name or abbreviation
  • %% - 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().

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 Beskrivelse
5.1.0

Now issues the E_STRICT and E_NOTICE time zone errors.

Eksempler

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.



strptime> <mktime
Last updated: Sun, 25 Nov 2007
 
add a note add a note User Contributed Notes
strftime
szilagyigabor at yahoo dot com
02-Nov-2009 07:43
This is that worked with UTF-8 encoding on Linux server, with right accents:
<?php
setlocale
(LC_ALL, 'hu_HU.UTF8');
echo(
strftime('%Y. %B %d. %A'));
?>

Output is:
2009. november 02. hétfő

Also, this one can be used, if not utf-8 preferred:
<?php
setlocale
(LC_ALL, 'hu_HU.ISO8859-2');
?>

UTF-8 is not supported on windows platforms, so there the iconv workaround must be used:
<?php
setlocale
(LC_ALL, 'hun_hun');
echo(
iconv('ISO-8859-2', 'UTF-8',strftime('%Y. %B %d. %A')));
?>

The output is the same as before. Note that, the iconv first parameter is ISO-8859-2 not ISO-8859-1, because the locale is hungarian which uses 8859-2 codepage as default. It is needed for the right accents.

If you want use the same code for Windows and Linux platforms, the second one is the right option (the iconv trick), but the locale configuration must be different (Linux: hu_HU, windows: hun_hun), but in that case the UTF8 tag is not needed for the Linux config.
jjarsater at gmail dot com
20-May-2009 02:01
<?php
// Date string
$timestamp     =     strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Y");

// From this string ($timestamp) can we print
echo strftime("%a %d %b %H:%M:%S %Y", strtotime($timestamp))."<br/>";
echo
strftime("%a %d %b %H:%M", strtotime($timestamp))."<br/>";
echo
strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", strtotime($timestamp))."<br/>";
echo
strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M", strtotime($timestamp))."<br/>";
echo
strftime("%Y-%m-%d", strtotime($timestamp))."<br/>";
echo
strftime("%a %d %b %Y", strtotime($timestamp))."<br/>";

/*And it will output

Wed 20 May 15:53:40 2009
Wed 20 May 15:53
2009-05-20 15:53:40
2009-05-20 15:53
2009-05-20
Wed 20 May 2009

*/
?>
Michael Z.
18-May-2009 10:12
This is so simple it has to be found in one of all the comments on all those different time functions. But since I didn't find it, here it is: Use this to convert between different time formats:

<?PHP
if (!function_exists('convertTime')) {
 
/** Converts time strings from one format into another using
   *  PHP formats.
   *
   *  @param String $dformat Format to convert to
   *  @param String $sformat Format to convert from, e.g. format
   *      of $ts
   *  @param String $ts Time string to be converted
   *  @return String Supplied time translated to the format specified
   *    in $dformat
   */
 
function convertTime($dformat,$sformat,$ts) {
   
extract(strptime($ts,$sformat));
    return
strftime($dformat,mktime(
                                 
intval($tm_hour),
                                 
intval($tm_min),
                                 
intval($tm_sec),
                                 
intval($tm_mon)+1,
                                 
intval($tm_mday),
                                 
intval($tm_year)+1900
                               
));
  }
}

/*
 * And for the test....
 */
echo convertTime('%Y-%m-%d','%d.%m.%Y','27.11.2009');
?>

This should print "2009-27-11".

I did not put much effort in this code. The task also seems "too simple to be neccessary". But as I said, I didn't find anything to help me with this.

Cheers,

Michael Z
dapikk[at]gmail[dot]com
16-Mar-2009 10:21
I had a need to subtrackt an older time from current time to get the time between.
Example: If one has worked from 2009-03-16 11:33:54 to 2009-03-16 12:01:54 then he has worked X hours,minutes and seconds. I tried to find that X. And so - one solution would be:
<?php
$start_date
= strtotime("2009-03-16 11:33:54"); //start date from database - date("Y-m-d H:i:s") made as UNIX timestamp
$end_date = strtotime("2009-03-16 12:01:54"); //end date from database - date("Y-m-d H:i:s") made as UNIX timestamp
$ajavahe = $end_date - $start_date;
$time_between = gmstrftime('%Hh %Mm %Ss', $ajavahe); //gmstrftime() deals with different timezones correctly. (If in example you would be situated in Estonia and you would use strftime() you get wrong answer off by 2 hrs, because timezone is GMT+2 - with gmstrftime() comes right answer.)

echo 'You have worked: '.$time_between;
?>
Hope that this one makes someones life easier :D
lamb dot dan at gmail dot com
04-Dec-2008 06:37
<?php
/*
*    This function figures out what fiscal year a specified date is in.
*    $inputDate - the date you wish to find the fiscal year for. (12/4/08)
*    $fyStartDate - the month and day your fiscal year starts. (7/1)
*    $fyEndDate - the month and day your fiscal year ends. (6/30)
*    $fy - returns the correct fiscal year
*/
function calculateFiscalYearForDate($inputDate, $fyStart, $fyEnd){
   
$date = strtotime($inputDate);
   
$inputyear = strftime('%Y',$date);
       
   
$fystartdate = strtotime($fyStart.$inputyear);
   
$fyenddate = strtotime($fyEnd.$inputyear);

    if(
$date < $fyenddate){
       
$fy = intval($inputyear);
    }else{
       
$fy = intval(intval($inputyear) + 1);
    }
   
    return
$fy;
   
}

// my fiscal year starts on July,1 and ends on June 30, so...
echo calculateFiscalYearForDate("5/15/08","7/1","6/30");
// returns 2008

echo calculateFiscalYearForDate("12/1/08","7/1","6/30");
// returns 2009
?>
khaled dot ataia at gmail dot com
05-Nov-2008 02:24
for Arabic

<?php
setlocale
(LC_ALL,'ar');
echo
strftime('%A %d %B %Y');
?>
eljaunis at gmail dot com
22-Oct-2008 10:33
This is what worked in my case:

<?php
    setlocale
(LC_ALL, 'es_ES').': ';
    echo
iconv('ISO-8859-1', 'UTF-8', strftime('%A %d de %B de %Y', time()));
   
?>

it displays: miércoles 22 de octubre de 2008
buana95 at yahoo dot com
21-Aug-2008 03:51
For windows user:

If you unsuccessfully change date/time format to your locale country using xx_XX format, try using XXX format or ISO-639 country codes format.

See complete list for ISO-639 here: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/iso639.htm

For example:

<?php
setlocale
(LC_ALL, 'IND');
echo
strftime("Today in Indonesia is %A");
?>
Josue R.
09-Mar-2008 03:36
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   =)
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));
        }
    }
}
?>
nielsvan den berge at hotmail dot com
31-Aug-2007 01:43
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 12:58
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 12:03
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]
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
jw at jwscripts dot com
29-May-2005 01:32
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);
}

?>
neo at gothic-chat d0t de
25-Jun-2004 06:27
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().
vminarik at ips-ag dot cz
10-Sep-2001 01:02
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));
?>
zmajeed at cup dot hp dot com
22-Jul-1999 10:14
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:

<?php
setlocale
("LC_TIME", "de_DE.roman8");
print(
strftime("%A\n"));
?>

strptime> <mktime
Last updated: Sun, 25 Nov 2007
 
 
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