PHP - Date and Time Formats
All the different formats that the DateTimeImmutable, DateTime, date_create(), date_create_immutable(), and strtotime() parser understands are grouped by section below:
Time Formats
This section describes the different date/time formats that the DateTimeImmutable, DateTime, date_create(), date_create_immutable(), and strtotime() parser understands.
Used Symbols
| Description | Formats | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| frac | . [0-9]+ | ".21342", ".85" |
| hh | "0"?[1-9] | "1"[0-2] | "04", "7", "12" |
| HH | [01][0-9] | "2"[0-4] | "04", "07", "19" |
| meridian | [AaPp] .? [Mm] .? [\0\t ] | "A.m.", "pM", "am." |
| MM | [0-5][0-9] | "00", "12", "59" |
| II | [0-5][0-9] | "00", "12", "59" |
| space | [ \t] | |
| tz | "("? [A-Za-z]{1,6} ")"? | [A-Z][a-z]+([_/][A-Z][a-z]+)+ | "CEST", "Europe/Amsterdam", "America/Indiana/Knox" |
| tzcorrection | "GMT"? [+-] hh ":"? MM? | "+0400", "GMT-07:00", "-07:00" |
12 Hour Notation
| Description | Formats | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Hour only, with meridian | hh space? meridian | "4 am", "5PM" |
| Hour and minutes, with meridian | hh [.:] MM space? meridian | "4:08 am", "7:19P.M." |
| Hour, minutes and seconds, with meridian | hh [.:] MM [.:] II space? meridian | "4:08:37 am", "7:19:19P.M." |
| MS SQL (Hour, minutes, seconds and fraction with meridian) | hh ":" MM ":" II [.:] [0-9]+ meridian | "4:08:39:12313am" |
24 Hour Notation
| Description | Formats | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Hour and minutes | 't'? HH [.:] MM | "04:08", "19.19", "T23:43" |
| Hour and minutes, no colon | 't'? HH MM | "0408", "t1919", "T2343" |
| Hour, minutes and seconds | 't'? HH [.:] MM [.:] II | "04.08.37", "t19:19:19" |
| Hour, minutes and seconds, no colon | 't'? HH MM II | "040837", "T191919" |
| Hour, minutes, seconds and timezone | 't'? HH [.:] MM [.:] II space? ( tzcorrection | tz ) | "040837CEST", "T191919-0700" |
| Hour, minutes, seconds and fraction | 't'? HH [.:] MM [.:] II frac | "04.08.37.81412", "19:19:19.532453" |
| Time zone information | tz | tzcorrection | "CEST", "Europe/Amsterdam", "+0430", "GMT-06:00" |
Date Formats
This section describes the different date formats that the strtotime(), DateTime and date_create() parser understands.
Used Symbols
| Description | Formats | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| daysuf | "st" | "nd" | "rd" | "th" | |
| dd | ([0-2]?[0-9] | "3"[01]) daysuf? | "7th", "22nd", "31" |
| DD | "0" [0-9] | [1-2][0-9] | "3" [01] | "07", "31" |
| m | 'january' | 'february' | 'march' | 'april' | 'may' | 'june' | 'july' | 'august' | 'september' | 'october' | 'november' | 'december' | 'jan' | 'feb' | 'mar' | 'apr' | 'may' | 'jun' | 'jul' | 'aug' | 'sep' | 'sept' | 'oct' | 'nov' | 'dec' | "I" | "II" | "III" | "IV" | "V" | "VI" | "VII" | "VIII" | "IX" | "X" | "XI" | "XII" | |
| M | 'jan' | 'feb' | 'mar' | 'apr' | 'may' | 'jun' | 'jul' | 'aug' | 'sep' | 'sept' | 'oct' | 'nov' | 'dec' | |
| mm | "0"? [0-9] | "1"[0-2] | "0", "04", "7", "12" |
| MM | "0" [0-9] | "1"[0-2] | "00", "04", "07", "12" |
| y | [0-9]{1,4} | "00", "78", "08", "8", "2008" |
| yy | [0-9]{2} | "00", "08", "78" |
| YY | [0-9]{4} | "2000", "2008", "1978" |
Localized Notations
| Description | Formats | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| American month and day | mm "/" dd | "5/12", "10/27" |
| American month, day and year | mm "/" dd "/" y | "12/22/78", "1/17/2006", "1/17/6" |
| Four digit year, month and day with slashes | YY "/" mm "/" dd | "2008/6/30", "1978/12/22" |
| Four digit year and month (GNU) | YY "-" mm | "2008-6", "2008-06", "1978-12" |
| Year, month and day with dashes | y "-" mm "-" dd | "2008-6-30", "78-12-22", "8-6-21" |
| Day, month and four digit year, with dots, tabs or dashes | dd [.\t-] mm [.-] YY | "30-6-2008", "22.12.1978" |
| Day, month and two digit year, with dots or tabs | dd [.\t] mm "." yy | "30.6.08", "22\t12.78" |
| Day, textual month and year | dd ([ \t.-])* m ([ \t.-])* y | "30-June 2008", "22DEC78", "14 III 1879" |
| Textual month and four digit year (Day reset to 1) | m ([ \t.-])* YY | "June 2008", "DEC1978", "March 1879" |
| Four digit year and textual month (Day reset to 1) | YY ([ \t.-])* m | "2008 June", "1978-XII", "1879.MArCH" |
| Textual month, day and year | m ([ .\t-])* dd [,.stndrh\t ]+ y | "July 1st, 2008", "April 17, 1790", "May.9,78" |
| Textual month and day | m ([ .\t-])* dd [,.stndrh\t ]* | "July 1st,", "Apr 17", "May.9" |
| Day and textual month | d ([ .\t-])* m | "1 July", "17 Apr", "9.May" |
| Month abbreviation, day and year | M "-" DD "-" y | "May-09-78", "Apr-17-1790" |
| Year, month abbreviation and day | y "-" M "-" DD | "78-Dec-22", "1814-MAY-17" |
| Year (and just the year) | YY | "1978", "2008" |
| Textual month (and just the month) | m | "March", "jun", "DEC" |
ISO8601 Notations
| Description | Formats | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Eight digit year, month and day | YY MM DD | "15810726", "19780417", "18140517" |
| Four digit year, month and day with slashes | YY "/" MM "/" DD | "2008/06/30", "1978/12/22" |
| Two digit year, month and day with dashes | yy "-" MM "-" DD | "08-06-30", "78-12-22" |
| Four digit year with optional sign, month and day | [+-]? YY "-" MM "-" DD | "-0002-07-26", "+1978-04-17", "1814-05-17" |
Note: For the y and yy formats, years below 100 are handled in a special way when the y or yy symbol is used. If the year falls in the range 0 (inclusive) to 69 (inclusive), 2000 is added. If the year falls in the range 70 (inclusive) to 99 (inclusive) then 1900 is added. This means that "00-01-01" is interpreted as "2000-01-01".
Note: The "Day, month and two digit year, with dots or tabs" format (dd [.\t] mm "." yy) only works for the year values 61 (inclusive) to 99 (inclusive) - outside those years the time format "HH [.:] MM [.:] SS" has precedence.
Note: The "Year (and just the year)" format only works if a time string has already been found -- otherwise this format is recognized as HH MM.
Note: It is possible to over- and underflow the dd and DD format. Day 0 means the last day of previous month, whereas overflows count into the next month. This makes "2008-08-00" equivalent to "2008-07-31" and "2008-06-31" equivalent to "2008-07-01" (June only has 30 days).
Note that the day range is restricted to 0-31 as indicated by the regular expression above. Thus "2008-06-32" is not a valid date string, for instance.
It is also possible to underflow the mm and MM formats with the value 0. A month value of 0 means December of the previous year. As example "2008-00-22" is equivalent to "2007-12-22".
If you combine the previous two facts and underflow both the day and the month, the following happens: "2008-00-00" first gets converted to "2007-12-00" which then gets converted to "2007-11-30". This also happens with the string "0000-00-00", which gets transformed into "-0001-11-30" (the year -1 in the ISO 8601 calendar, which is 2 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar).Compound Formats
This section describes the different compound date/time formats that the strtotime(), DateTime and date_create() parser understands.
Used Symbols
| Description | Formats | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| DD | "0" [0-9] | [1-2][0-9] | "3" [01] | "02", "12", "31" |
| doy | "00"[1-9] | "0"[1-9][0-9] | [1-2][0-9][0-9] | "3"[0-5][0-9] | "36"[0-6] | "001", "012", "180", "350", "366" |
| frac | . [0-9]+ | ".21342", ".85" |
| hh | "0"?[1-9] | "1"[0-2] | "04", "7", "12" |
| HH | [01][0-9] | "2"[0-4] | "04", "07", "19" |
| meridian | [AaPp] .? [Mm] .? [\0\t ] | "A.m.", "pM", "am." |
| ii | [0-5]?[0-9] | "04", "8", "59" |
| II | [0-5][0-9] | "04", "08", "59" |
| M | 'jan' | 'feb' | 'mar' | 'apr' | 'may' | 'jun' | 'jul' | 'aug' | 'sep' | 'sept' | 'oct' | 'nov' | 'dec' | |
| MM | [0-1][0-9] | "00", "12" |
| space | [ \t] | |
| ss | ([0-5]?[0-9])|60 | "04", "8", "59", "60" (leap second) |
| SS | [0-5][0-9] | "04", "08", "59" |
| W | "0"[1-9] | [1-4][0-9] | "5"[0-3] | "05", "17", "53" |
| tzcorrection | "GMT"? [+-] hh ":"? II? | "+0400", "GMT-07:00", "-07:00" |
| YY | [0-9]{4} | "2000", "2008", "1978" |
Localized Notations
| Description | Formats | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Common Log Format | dd "/" M "/" YY : HH ":" II ":" SS space tzcorrection | "10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700" |
| EXIF | YY ":" MM ":" DD " " HH ":" II ":" SS | "2008:08:07 18:11:31" |
| ISO year with ISO week | YY "-"? "W" W | "2008W27", "2008-W28" |
| ISO year with ISO week and day | YY "-"? "W" W "-"? [0-7] | "2008W273", "2008-W28-3" |
| MySQL | YY "-" MM "-" DD " " HH ":" II ":" SS | "2008-08-07 18:11:31" |
| PostgreSQL: Year with day-of-year | YY "."? doy | "2008.197", "2008197" |
| SOAP | YY "-" MM "-" DD "T" HH ":" II ":" SS frac tzcorrection? | "2008-07-01T22:35:17.02", "2008-07-01T22:35:17.03+08:00" |
| Unix Timestamp | "@" "-"? [0-9]+ | "@1215282385" |
| XMLRPC | YY MM DD "T" hh ":" II ":" SS | "20080701T22:38:07", "20080701T9:38:07" |
| XMLRPC (Compact) | YY MM DD 't' hh II SS | "20080701t223807", "20080701T093807" |
| WDDX | YY "-" mm "-" dd "T" hh ":" ii ":" ss | "2008-7-1T9:3:37" |
Note: The "W" in the "ISO year with ISO week" and "ISO year with ISO week and day" formats is case-sensitive, you can only use the upper case "W".
The "T" in the SOAP, XMRPC and WDDX formats is case-sensitive, you can only use the upper case "T".
The "Unix Timestamp" format sets the timezone to UTC.Relative Formats
This section describes the different relative date/time formats that the strtotime(), DateTime and date_create() parser understands.
Used Symbols
| Description | Format |
|---|---|
| dayname | 'sunday' | 'monday' | 'tuesday' | 'wednesday' | 'thursday' | 'friday' | 'saturday' | 'sun' | 'mon' | 'tue' | 'wed' | 'thu' | 'fri' | 'sat' |
| daytext | 'weekday' | 'weekdays' |
| number | [+-]?[0-9]+ |
| ordinal | 'first' | 'second' | 'third' | 'fourth' | 'fifth' | 'sixth' | 'seventh' | 'eighth' | 'ninth' | 'tenth' | 'eleventh' | 'twelfth' | 'next' | 'last' | 'previous' | 'this' |
| reltext | 'next' | 'last' | 'previous' | 'this' |
| space | [ \t]+ |
| unit | (('sec' | 'second' | 'min' | 'minute' | 'hour' | 'day' | 'fortnight' | 'forthnight' | 'month' | 'year') 's'?) | 'weeks' | daytext |
Day-based Notations
| Description | Formats | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 'yesterday' | Midnight of yesterday | "yesterday 14:00" |
| 'midnight' | The time is set to 00:00:00 | |
| 'today' | The time is set to 00:00:00 | |
| 'now' | Now - this is simply ignored | |
| 'noon' | The time is set to 12:00:00 | "yesterday noon" |
| 'tomorrow' | Midnight of tomorrow | |
| 'back of' | hour 15 minutes past the specified hour | "back of 7pm", "back of 15" |
| 'front of' | hour 15 minutes before the specified hour | "front of 5am", "front of 23" |
| 'first day of' | Sets the day of the first of the current month. This phrase is best used together with a month name following it. | "first day of January 2008" |
| 'last day of' | Sets the day to the last day of the current month. This phrase is best used together with a month name following it. | "last day of next month" |
| ordinal space dayname space 'of' | Calculates the x-th week day of the current month. | "first sat of July 2008" |
| 'last' space dayname space 'of' | Calculates the last week day of the current month. | "last sat of July 2008" |
| number space? (unit | 'week') | Handles relative time items where the value is a number. | "+5 weeks", "12 day", "-7 weekdays" |
| ordinal space unit | Handles relative time items where the value is text. | "fifth day", "second month" |
| 'ago' | Negates all the values of previously found relative time items. | "2 days ago", "8 days ago 14:00", "2 months 5 days ago", "2 months ago 5 days", "2 days ago" |
| dayname | Moves to the next day of this name. | "Monday" |
| reltext space 'week' | Handles the special format "weekday + last/this/next week". | "Monday next week" |
Note: Relative statements are always processed after non-relative statements. This makes "+1 week july 2008" and "july 2008 +1 week" equivalent.
Exceptions to this rule are: "yesterday", "midnight", "today", "noon" and "tomorrow". Note that "tomorrow 11:00" and "11:00 tomorrow" are different. Considering today's date of "July 23rd, 2008" the first one produces "2008-07-24 11:00" where as the second one produces "2008-07-24 00:00". The reason for this is that those five statements directly influence the current time.Note: Observe the following remarks when the current day-of-week is the same as the day-of-week used in the date/time string. The current day-of-week could have been (re-)calculated by non-relative parts of the date/time string however.
- "dayname" does not advance to another day. (Example: "Wed July 23rd, 2008" means "2008-07-23").
- "number dayname" does not advance to another day. (Example: "1 wednesday july 23rd, 2008" means "2008-07-23").
- "number week dayname" will first add the number of weeks, but does not advance to another day. In this case "number week" and "dayname" are two distinct blocks. (Example: "+1 week wednesday july 23rd, 2008" means "2008-07-30").
- "ordinal dayname" does advance to another day. (Example "first wednesday july 23rd, 2008" means "2008-07-30").
- "number week ordinal dayname" will first add the number of weeks, and then advances to another day. In this case "number week" and "ordinal dayname" are two distinct blocks. (Example: "+1 week first wednesday july 23rd, 2008" means "2008-08-06").
- "ordinal dayname 'of' " does not advance to another day. (Example: "first wednesday of july 23rd, 2008" means "2008-07-02" because the specific phrase with 'of' resets the day-of-month to '1' and the '23rd' is ignored here).
Also observe that the "of" in "ordinal space dayname space 'of' " and "'last' space dayname space 'of' " does something special.
- It sets the day-of-month to 1.
- "ordinal dayname 'of' " does not advance to another day. (Example: "first tuesday of july 2008" means "2008-07-01").
- "ordinal dayname " does advance to another day. (Example: "first tuesday july 2008" means "2008-07-08", see also point 4 in the list above).
- "'last' dayname 'of' " takes the last dayname of the current month. (Example: "last wed of july 2008" means "2008-07-30")
- "'last' dayname" takes the last dayname from the current day. (Example: "last wed july 2008" means "2008-06-25"; "july 2008" first sets the current date to "2008-07-01" and then "last wed" moves to the previous Wednesday which is "2008-06-25").
Note: Relative month values are calculated based on the length of months that they pass through. An example would be "+2 month 2011-11-30", which would produce "2012-01-30". This is due to November being 30 days in length, and December being 31 days in length, producing a total of 61 days.
Note: number is an integer number; if a decimal number is given, the dot (or comma) is likely interpreted as delimiter. For instance, '+1.5 hours' is parsed like '+1 5 hours', not as '+1 hour +30 minutes'.
