How do I get the current date and time in PHP?

Question

Which PHP function can return the current date/time?

Answer 1

date_default_timezone_set('Europe/Warsaw');
echo("<p class='time'>".date('H:i:s')."</p>");
echo("<p class='date'>".date('d/m/Y')."</p>");

Answer 2

The time would go by your server time. An easy workaround for this is to manually set the timezone by using date_default_timezone_set before the date() or time() functions are called to.

I'm in Melbourne, Australia so I have something like this:

date_default_timezone_set('Australia/Melbourne');

Or another example is LA - US:

date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');

You can also see what timezone the server is currently in via:

date_default_timezone_get();

So something like:

$timezone = date_default_timezone_get();
echo "The current server timezone is: " . $timezone;

So the short answer for your question would be:

// Change the line below to your timezone!
date_default_timezone_set('Australia/Melbourne');
$date = date('m/d/Y h:i:s a', time());

Then all the times would be to the timezone you just set :)

Answer 3

If you are Bangladeshi, and if you want to get the time of Dhaka then use this:

$date = new DateTime();
$date->setTimeZone(new DateTimeZone("Asia/Dhaka"));
$get_datetime = $date->format('d.m.Y H:i:s');

Answer 4

You can use this format also:

$date = date("d-m-Y");

Or

$date = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");

Answer 5

If you want a different timescale, please use:

$tomorrow  = mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m")  , date("d")+1, date("Y"));
$lastmonth = mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m")-1, date("d"),   date("Y"));
$nextyear  = mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m"),   date("d"),   date("Y")+1);

date_default_timezone_set("Asia/Calcutta");
echo date("Y/m/d H:i:s");

Answer 6

Another simple way is to take the timestamp of the current date and time. Use mktime() function:

$now = mktime(); // Return timestamp of the current time

Then you can convert this to another date format:

//// Prints something like: Thursday 26th of January 2017 01:12:36 PM
echo date('l jS \of F Y h:i:s A',$now);

More date formats are here: http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php