PHP microtime() Function
The PHP microtime() function returns the current Unix timestamp with microseconds.
Note: This function is only available on operating systems that support the gettimeofday() system call.
Syntax
microtime(as_float)
Parameters
as_float |
Optional. When set to true, the function will return a float instead of a string. Default is false. |
Return Value
By default, the function returns a string in the form "msec sec", where sec is the number of seconds since the Unix epoch (0:00:00 January 1,1970 GMT), and msec measures microseconds that have elapsed since sec and is also expressed in seconds.
When as_float is set to true, then the function returns a float, which represents the current time in seconds since the Unix epoch accurate to the nearest microsecond.
Example: microtime() example
The example below shows the usage of microtime() function.
<?php //displaying Unix timestamp as string print_r(microtime()); echo "\n"; //displaying Unix timestamp as float echo microtime(true); ?>
The output of the above code will be:
0.41624500 1632920208 1632920208.4163
Example: Timing script execution
The microtime() function can be used to time a script execution. Consider the example below:
<?php $time_start = microtime(true); //sleep for a while usleep(100); $time_end = microtime(true); $time = $time_end - $time_start; echo "Did nothing in $time seconds\n"; ?>
The output of the above code will be:
Did nothing in 0.00019216537475586 seconds
❮ PHP Date and Time Reference