DateTimeInterface::format

Description

Oop

Procedural

Returns date formatted according to given format.

Parameters

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 required, 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 DateTimeInterface::format does support microseconds if an object of type DateTimeInterface 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. Only compatible with the non-expanded format (up to year 9999). Later dates will result in an invalid string. For later dates and expanded format, see x and X.	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().

Note

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().

Return Values

Returns the formatted date string on success.

Changelog

Examples

DateTimeInterface::format() example

Oop

<?php
$date = new DateTimeImmutable('2000-01-01');
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
?>

The above example will output:

2000-01-01 00:00:00

Procedural

<?php
$date = date_create('2000-01-01');
echo date_format($date, 'Y-m-d H:i:s');
?>

The above example will output:

2000-01-01 00:00:00

More examples

<?php
// set the default timezone to use.
date_default_timezone_set('UTC');

// now
$date = new DateTimeImmutable();

// Prints something like: Wednesday
echo $date->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.

Escaping characters while formatting

<?php
$date = new DateTimeImmutable();

// prints something like: Wednesday the 19th
echo $date->format('l \t\h\e jS');
?>

To format dates in other languages, IntlDateFormatter::format can be used instead of DateTimeInterface::format.

Notes

This method does not use locales. All output is in English.

See Also

• IntlDateFormatter::format