How to get current date and time in PHP
Answer: Using date() function
The PHP date() function is an in-built function that is used to format the date and time into human-readable form. With the help of the PHP date() function, we can get the current date and time in multiple formats. The multiple formats supported by the PHP date() function are given below:
-
date(“Y/m/d”);
-
date(“Y.m.d”);
-
date(“Y-m-d”);
-
date(“H:i:s”);
-
date(“Y-m-d H:i:s”);
-
date(“l”);
Where,
Y represents the yearm represents the month (1 to 12)d represents the day of the month (1 to 31)H represents the 24 hours formati represents the minutess represents the secondsl represents the day of the week
Example
This is an example of the current date in php.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>PHP date and time</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
$date = date('d-m-y h:i:s');
echo $date;
?>
</body>
</html>
Output
09-07-21 11:18:15
The output we get from the date() function is based on the server's default timezone setting. If we want to get the exact date and time, then we have to specify the timezone. To specify the timezone, we have to add the date_default_timezone_set() function just before the date function.
Example
This is an example of the current date with timezone in php.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>PHP date and time</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
date_default_timezone_set('Asia/Kolkata');
$date = date('d-m-y h:i:s');
echo $date;
?>
</body>
</html>
Output
09-07-21 02:56:33
Conclusion
In this lesson, we have discussed how to get the current date and time in PHP. We can get the current date and time using the date() function. The date() function returns the date and time based on the server's default timezone. To get the actual date and time based on the user timezone, we have to add the date_default_timezone_set() function just before the date() function.
