Parameters

object

Procedural style only: A DateTime object returned by date_create()

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'.

The following characters are recognized in the format parameter string

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 DateTime::format() does support microseconds if DateTime 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	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().