strftime()

strftime() — Format a local time/date according to locale settings.

Built-in function of PHP 8.5. The manual lists it as available in PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8. This page is the reference card: signature, parameters and return value, plus the changelog and the example the manual provides.

The PHP manual marks this function as deprecated (since PHP 8.1, use IntlDateFormatter::format() instead): do not use it in new code.

What it does

Format the time and/or date according to locale settings. Month and weekday names and other language-dependent strings respect the current locale set with setlocale().

Signature

strftime(string $format, ?int $timestamp = null): string|false

Parameters

Parameter	Type	What it takes
$format	string	The following characters are recognized in the format parameter string format Description Example returned values Day --- --- %a An abbreviated textual representation of the day Sun through Sat %A A full textual representation of the day Sunday through Saturday %d Two-digit day of the month (with leading zeros) 01 to 31 %e Day of the month, with a space preceding single digits. Not implemented as described on ...
$timestamp	?int	The optional timestamp parameter is an int Unix timestamp that defaults to the current local time if timestamp is omitted or null. In other words, it defaults to the value of time().

Return value

Returns a string formatted according format using the given timestamp or the current local time if no timestamp is given. Month and weekday names and other language-dependent strings respect the current locale set with setlocale(). The function returns false if format is empty, contains unsupported conversion specifiers, or if the length of the returned string would be greater than 4095.

Example

A runnable snippet:

setlocale(LC_TIME, "C"); echo strftime("%A"); setlocale(LC_TIME, "fi_FI"); echo strftime(" in Finnish is %A,"); setlocale(LC_TIME, "fr_FR"); echo strftime(" in French %A and"); setlocale(LC_TIME, "de_DE"); echo strftime(" in German %A.\n");

Changelog

Version	Change
8.0.0	timestamp is nullable now.