Date Functions

Published May 23, 2022

PHP manipulates dates in a number of ways, using arrays, strings, Unix timestamps, or DateTime objects. PHP provides a number of built-in functions for manipulating dates using these various data types.

Date Functions

date_add(): Adds a given number of days, months, years, hours, minutes or seconds to an existing date.
date_create(): Creates a new DateTime object from a formatted date-time string.
date_diff(): Takes two DateTime objects, calculates the difference, and returns a DateInterval object.
date_format(): Takes a DateTime object and returns a string based on its formatted value.
date_parse(): Accepts a date as a parameter, parses it, and returns information about the given date in the form of an array.
date_sub(): Subtracts a specified interval from a given date.
date(): Creates a formatted date-time string from a local date-time.
getdate(): Returns an array representing the current date or a Unix timestamp.
time(): Returns current time measured in seconds from the Unix Epoch.