Updated March 17, 2023
Introduction to PHP Change Date Format
PHP Date functions are used to print the date of the server or the current date. It is mainly used in logging the information when the system is performing any operations on the server. One can change the date information about how it is required for any particular operation. The data provided will be standard (yyyy-mm-dd) as the date can be changed as per the need using many date methods and functions. Below listed are the techniques used to change the date format in the server.
PHP Date Format:
PHP Change Date Format provides you with the server’s date information where the particular PHP script is executed. So the server will provide us with the information in the standard format when the date function gets executed. If you want to change the format as you wish, it can be done using several ways.
Types of Date Formats
There are few data formats used in PHP to print the date as per the requirement:
- date_create(): This function will create the date as per the mentioned date format in the date_format function. If you are passing the date format as dd-mm-yyyy, it will print the date in the format that is mentioned. It returns the object to the date_format () function.
- date_modify(): This function will modify the date specified by the user, i.e., if the user is specifying +15 days, then the date printed will be 15 days ahead of the current date. This function modifies the timestamp of the server to be printed.
- date_create_from_format (): This function will create the date mentioned in the format, create an object according to the mentioned format, and pass it to the date_format function.
How to Convert Date Format?
Many programmers use different date and time functions to make the changes as per their requirements. The change depends upon the region and based on where it is used as well.
For example, if the user wants to use the database for any employee entry and the date format of the server is different from the format used by the database, then the database will not accept the standard format as the database has its restrictions. So the user has to change the format to the required ones using various techniques available in PHP. There are many instances where the date and time functions have their format.
For example, in India, the date will be printed in IST (Indian Standard Time) format; in the USA, it will be printed in CDT/CST (Central Standard Time) format; in Japan, it will be printed in JST (Japan Standard Time) format, in Canada it will be printed in EST (Eastern Standard Time). So, the database and the server will have different time zones comparatively. To get it compatible with the date format, time zones changes accordingly for not getting any conflicts between the data to be entered. One of the techniques is strtotime() function which prints the date mentioned in the format as it is.
Example #1
Here is an example to use strtotime() function, which prints the date.
Code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<?php
$o = "2019-10-30";
// It creates the timestamp from the date mentioned.
$a = strtotime($o);
$new = date("d/m/Y", $a);
echo $new;
?>
</body>
</html>Output:
In the above output, the date mentioned will be the one that is mentioned in the date function. As the date mentioned here is d/m/y, the output also has the same format. If you want to specify a hyphen(-) instead of backslash(/), you can mention it in the date format itself.
Example #2
Here are a few examples of how to convert the date from the standard one to the required format.
Code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<?php
$currentdate=date_create("2012-09-13");
echo date_format($currentdate,"m/d/Y");
?>
</body>
</html>Output:
Here in the above code and output, the date specified in the date format function is the one to be printed in the output. The user can specify whatever format he wants to see, like dd-mm-yyyy or dd-mm-yy or dd/mm/yyyy or dd/mm/yy, etc.
Code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<?php
$a = '2019-05-25';
$d = new DateTime($a);
echo $d->format('Y.m.d');
?>
</body>
</html>Output:
In the above code and the respective output, the date format is mentioned in the code passed with the function format as seen above. The DateTime() method will convert the date in the format mentioned in the format function and will create an object to pass it to the format function.
Code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<?php
$date=date_create_from_format("j-M-Y","27-Feb-2019");
echo " The changed date format is ", date_format($date,"d/m/Y");
?>
</body>
</html>Output:
In the above code, the format specified in the date created from the format method is the input to the method date_format as the date mentioned in the code will be printed in the format mentioned in the code.
So we learned many methods as to how to change the date for a particular format using various date functions. In all the date functions, the common thing was already the date was mentioned in the code itself. If you want to take the current date as the input to the specified format, you can simply use the date () function or Date Time () function to retrieve the date and time, respectively. So the user can work the static way as well as a dynamic way to retrieve the date from the server. Similarly, like date functions, we have various time functions that can be used to change the time zones as well as the time format of the servers. All of the servers will have a common time, i.e. UTC (Universal Time Zone), unless it gets changed to its respective country/region.
Conclusion – PHP Change Date Format
In this article, we discussed the date format, how to change the date format, and its types. These changes’ main objective is to have a smooth flow between various conflicts faced when servers of different countries are used together and have a commonplace as a repository.
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