Welcome to a quick tutorial on how to format a Unix Timestamp to a readable date and time in PHP. Need to get a “human-friendly” date from a Unix Timestamp?
We can use the date function to format a Unix Timestamp in PHP.
- To the ISO 8601 format –
$formatted = date(DateTimeInterface::ATOM, $UNIX); - To MySQL date format –
$formatted = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $UNIX); - Various other custom formats –
$formatted = date("D, j F Y h:i:s A", $UNIX);
That covers the basics, but read on for more examples!
TLDR – QUICK SLIDES
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PHP UNIX TIMESTAMP TO DATE TIME
All right, let us now get into the examples of formatting a Unix Timestamp in PHP.
EXAMPLE 1) PREDEFINED DATE FORMATS
<?php
// (A) 07 AUG 1999 05:04:03 UTC
$unix = 934002243;
// (B) ISO 8601
$iso = date(DateTimeInterface::ATOM, $unix);
echo $iso . "<br>";
// (C) COOKIE
$cookie = date(DateTimeInterface::COOKIE, $unix);
echo $cookie . "<br>";
// (D) EMAIL (RFC 2822)
$mail = date(DateTimeInterface::RFC2822, $unix);
echo $mail . "<br>";
// (E) HTTP 1.1 (RFC 7231)
$http = date(DateTimeInterface::RFC7231, $unix);
echo $http . "<br>";As in the introduction, the almighty date() function is pretty much all we need. PHP also comes with a list of predefined Internation standard date-time formats. If you need a full list of the predefined formats, I will leave a link to the PHP manual in the extras section below.
EXAMPLE 2) CUSTOM DATE FORMATS
<?php
// (A) 07 AUG 1999 05:04:03 UTC
$unix = 934002243;
// (B) MYSQL
$mysql = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $unix);
echo $mysql . "<br>";
// (C) CUSTOM DATE FORMAT
$customA = date("d/m/y H:i:s", $unix);
echo $customA . "<br>";
$customB = date("D, j F Y h:i:s A", $unix);
echo $customB . "<br>";Apart from taking in predefined formats, we can also fully customize our own date-time formats. There is a long list of “date-time parts” we can use, but I will not copy here… Again, I shall leave a link to the PHP manual below.
EXAMPLE 3) SETTING THE TIMEZONE
<?php
// (A) 07 AUG 1999 05:04:03 UTC
$unix = 934002243;
// (B) DATE WILL DEFAULT TO UTC
$tzA = date("Y-m-d H:i:s e", $unix);
echo $tzA . "<br>";
// (C) SET TIMEZONE
$tzB = new DateTime();
$tzB->setTimestamp($unix);
$tzB->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone("America/New_York"));
echo $tzB->format("Y-m-d H:i:s e") . "<br>";
$tzB->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone("Asia/Tokyo"));
echo $tzB->format("Y-m-d H:i:s e") . "<br>";Finally, setting the timezone is a little confusing. By default, the date() function will assume UTC+0 when parsing a Unix Timestamp. To set/change the timezone, we have to do it the “long-winded” way.
- Create a
$tz = new DateTime()object. - Then set it to the Unix Timestamp –
$tz->setTimestamp($UNIX). - At this point, we can do a
$formatted = $tz->format("FORMAT")to create a date string. But this defaults to UTC+0 again. - To change the timezone, we simply do a
$tz->setTimezone(TIMEZONE).
I shall leave a Wikipedia link below to the full list of international timezones.
DOWNLOAD & NOTES
Here is the download link to the example code, so you don’t have to copy-paste everything.
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EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD
Click here for the source code on GitHub gist, just click on “download zip” or do a git clone. I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.
EXTRA BITS & LINKS
That’s all for the tutorial, and here is a small section on some extras and links that may be useful to you.
LINKS & REFERENCES
- Date – PHP
- Date Time Format – PHP
- Predefined Date Constants – PHP
- TZ Database Time Zones – Wikipedia
INFOGRAPHIC CHEAT SHEET
THE END
Thank you for reading, and we have come to the end. I hope that it has helped you to better understand, and if you want to share anything with this guide, please feel free to comment below. Good luck and happy coding!
