PHP date() Function Format Characters

PHP date() Format Characters

PHP's date() function uses single-letter format characters — a system that is unique among programming languages and requires memorization since the letters are not always intuitive.

Format Characters

Char	Meaning	Example
Y	Year (4-digit)	2026
y	Year (2-digit)	26
m	Month (zero-padded)	02
n	Month (no padding)	2
F	Full month name	February
M	Abbreviated month	Feb
d	Day (zero-padded)	28
j	Day (no padding)	28
S	Ordinal suffix	th
l	Full weekday (lowercase L)	Saturday
D	Abbreviated weekday	Sat
N	Weekday (1=Monday, 7=Sunday)	6
w	Weekday (0=Sunday)	6
H	Hour 24h (zero-padded)	14
G	Hour 24h (no padding)	14
h	Hour 12h (zero-padded)	02
g	Hour 12h (no padding)	2
i	Minutes (zero-padded)	30
s	Seconds (zero-padded)	00
A	AM/PM (uppercase)	PM
a	am/pm (lowercase)	pm
U	Unix timestamp	1772236800
z	Day of year (0-365)	58
W	ISO week number	09
P	Timezone offset (+HH:MM)	+09:00
O	Timezone offset (+HHMM)	+0900
T	Timezone abbreviation	JST

Usage

echo date("Y-m-d H:i:s");          // 2026-02-28 14:30:00
echo date("F j, Y, g:i a");        // February 28, 2026, 2:30 pm
echo date("D, d M Y H:i:s O");     // Sat, 28 Feb 2026 14:30:00 +0900
echo date("jS \o\f F Y");         // 28th of February 2026

Escaping Characters

Any character that is not a format character is included as-is. To include a character that happens to be a format character, escape it with a backslash:

echo date("\T\o\d\a\y \i\s: l"); // "Today is: Saturday"

Predefined Constants

PHP provides constants for common formats:

DATE_ATOM     // "Y-m-d\TH:i:sP"   → 2026-02-28T14:30:00+09:00
DATE_ISO8601  // "Y-m-d\TH:i:sO"   → 2026-02-28T14:30:00+0900
DATE_RFC2822  // "D, d M Y H:i:s O" → Sat, 28 Feb 2026 14:30:00 +0900
DATE_RSS      // Same as RFC 2822