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Formatting date and time values in PHP

Introduction
This TechNote discusses how to format date values while developing in the PHP scripting language. Formatting date values involves hand coding as described in the instructions below. Please note that this TechNote is for information purposes only. Hand coding is considered an advanced use of Dreamweaver and is not supported by Macromedia Technical Support.

PHP functions used to format date and time values
The following describes the functions developers can use for displaying and working with date in their PHP coded pages.

date(format, timestamp value) the date() function formats a valid timestamp value according to the specified date and/or time format. The date() function accepts two parameters, the date/time format and a valid timestamp value.

Below is a table of the most common format options used with the date() function. Other format options, as well as references to other PHP functions can be found at PHP.NET.

Format Character	Description	Returned value
d	Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros	01 to 31
D	A textual representation of a week, three letters	Mon through Sun
F	A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March	January through December
j	Day of the month without leading zeros	1 to 31
l (lower case L)	A full textual representation of the day of the week	Sunday through Saturday
M	A short textual representation of a month, three letters	Jan through Dec
S	English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters	st, nd, rd or th (Works well with j)
y	A two digit representation of a year	Examples: 99 or 03
Y	A full numeric representation of a year, 4 digits	Examples: 1999 or 2003

strtotime(date/time value) the strtotime() function parses a string date/time description into a valid UNIX timestamp.

The following is an example of the usage of both functions:

<?
 $dateValue = "March 28, 1973";
 $formattedDate = date("l, jS F Y", 
strtotime($dateValue));
?>

<?php echo $dateValue; ?> <br>
<?php echo $formattedDate; ?>

To format date and time values in PHP, do the following steps:

1	Select View > Code and Design.
2	Select the date or time value on the page. You should also see its corresponding source code selected in code view. The following code displays a column called startdate from a recordset called rsDetails in which the data is stored as a string (rather than as an integer): <?php echo $row_rsDetails['startdate'];?>
3	In order to manipulate the display of this data as a date, you must first convert it to a date. This is done with the strtotime() function. Add the strtotime() function to the code by identifying the code which must be converted to a date, then insert that code as a value inside the strtotime() function. Your code should be similar to the code below (the code in red has been added from the previous step). <?php echo strtotime($row_rsDetails['startdate']);?>
	Note: The step above should only be completed if the data you are starting with is in string format. If the data is already stored as an integer or is in a string format that doesn't convert to a date, using the strtotime() function will return a failure value of -1. This will cause the next step to fail.
4	Now that the data has been converted from string format to a date, format the date itself with the date() function (the code in red has been added from the previous step). Use the formatting choices describe at the top of this TechNote for your date formatting. <?php echo date("l, jS F Y",strtotime ($row_rsDetails ['startdate']));?>
5	Save your page and preview it in a browser. You should now see the formatted code. The code described in these steps produces the following format: Thursday, 22nd May 2003

ID:	18594
Product:	Dreamweaver
Versions:	MX
OS:	All
Browser:	All
Server:	All
Database:	All
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Last updated:	April 3, 2003
Created:	May 22, 2003




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