PHP 5 Power Programming

9.4. Date Handling

PHP has a range of functions that handle date and time. Some of these functions work with a so-called UNIX timestamp, which is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT, the beginning of the UNIX epoch. Because PHP only handles unsigned 32-bit integers and most operating systems don't support negative timestamps, the range in which most of the PHP date functions operate is January 1, 1970 to January 19, 2038. The PEAR::Date package handles dates outside this range and also in a platform-independent way.

9.4.1. Retrieving Date and Time Information

The easiest way of obtaining the current time is with the time() function. It accepts no parameters and simply returns the current timestamp:

 <?php echo time(); ...