PHP Cookbook

3.1. Finding the Current Date and Time

Problem

You want to know what the time or date is.

Solution

Use strftime( ) or date( ) for a formatted time string:

print strftime('%c');
print date('r');
Mon Aug 12 18:23:45 2002
               Mon, 12 Aug 2002 18:23:45 -0400

Use getdate( ) or localtime( ) if you want time parts:

$now_1 = getdate( );
$now_2 = localtime( );
print "$now_1[hours]:$now_1[minutes]:$now_1[seconds]";
print "$now_2[2]:$now_2[1]:$now_2[0]";
18:23:45
               18:23:45

Discussion

The functions strftime( ) and date( ) can produce a variety of formatted time and date strings. They are discussed in more detail in Recipe 3.5. Both localtime( ) and getdate( ), on the other hand, return arrays whose elements are the different pieces of the specified date and time.

The associative array getdate( ) returns has the key/value pairs listed in Table 3-1.

Table 3-1. Return array from getdate( )

Key	Value
seconds	Seconds
minutes	Minutes
hours	Hours
mday	Day of the month
wday	Day of the week, numeric (Sunday is 0, Saturday is 6)
mon	Month, numeric
year	Year, numeric
yday	Day of the year, numeric (e.g., 299)
weekday	Day of the week, textual, full (e.g., “Friday”)
month	Month, textual, full (e.g., “January”)

For example, here’s how to use getdate( ) to print out the month, day, and year:

$a = getdate( );
printf('%s %d, %d',$a['month'],$a['mday'],$a['year']);
August 7, 2002

Pass getdate( ) an epoch timestamp as an argument to make the returned array the appropriate ...