Compound Formats

This page describes the different compound date/time formats that the strtotime(), DateTime and date_create() parser understands.

Used Symbols
Description Formats Examples
DD "0" [0-9] | [1-2][0-9] | "3" [01] "02", "12", "31"
doy "00"[1-9] | "0"[1-9][0-9] | [1-2][0-9][0-9] | "3"[0-5][0-9] | "36"[0-6] "001", "012", "180", "350", "366"
frac . [0-9]+ ".21342", ".85"
hh "0"?[1-9] | "1"[0-2] "04", "7", "12"
HH [01][0-9] | "2"[0-4] "04", "07", "19"
meridian [AaPp] .? [Mm] .? [\0\t ] "A.m.", "pM", "am."
ii [0-5][0-9] "04", "8", "59"
II [0-5][0-9] "04", "08", "59"
M 'jan' | 'feb' | 'mar' | 'apr' | 'may' | 'jun' | 'jul' | 'aug' | 'sep' | 'sept' | 'oct' | 'nov' | 'dec'  
MM [0-1][0-9] "00", "12"
space [ \t]  
ss [0-5][0-9] "04", "8", "59"
SS [0-5][0-9] "04", "08", "59"
W "0"[1-9] | [1-4][0-9] | "5"[0-3] "05", "17", "53"
tzcorrection "GMT"? [+-] hh ":"? II? "+0400", "GMT-07:00", "-07:00"
YY [0-9]{4} "2000", "2008", "1978"
Localized Notations
Description Format Examples
Common Log Format dd "/" M "/" YY : HH ":" II ":" SS space tzcorrection "10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700"
EXIF YY ":" MM ":" DD " " HH ":" II ":" SS "2008:08:07 18:11:31"
ISO year with ISO week YY "-"? "W" W "2008W27", "2008-W28"
ISO year with ISO week and day YY "-"? "W" W "-"? [0-7] "2008W273", "2008-W28-3"
MySQL YY "-" MM "-" DD " " HH ":" II ":" SS "2008-08-07 18:11:31"
PostgreSQL: Year with day-of-year YY "."? doy "2008.197", "2008197"
SOAP YY "-" MM "-" DD "T" HH ":" II ":" SS frac tzcorrection? "2008-07-01T22:35:17.02", "2008-07-01T22:35:17.03+08:00"
Unix Timestamp "@" "-"? [0-9]+ "@1215282385"
XMLRPC YY MM DD "T" hh ":" II ":" SS "20080701T22:38:07", "20080701T9:38:07"
XMLRPC (Compact) YY MM DD 't' hh II SS "20080701t223807", "20080701T093807"
WDDX YY "-" mm "-" dd "T" hh ":" ii ":" ss "2008-7-1T9:3:37"

Notă:

The "W" in the "ISO year with ISO week" and "ISO year with ISO week and day" formats is case-sensitive, you can only use the upper case "W".

The "T" in the SOAP, XMRPC and WDDX formats is case-sensitive, you can only use the upper case "T".

The "Unix Timestamp" format sets the timezone to UTC.

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User Contributed Notes 2 notes

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2
Bilge at steam250 dot com
3 years ago
Unix timestamps also accept a microseconds specifier. e.g. @1607974647.503686 is valid and will be parsed as 2020-12-14 19:37:27.503686+00.
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-3
tuxedobob
8 years ago
When trying to create a DateTime from a string, PHP essentially doesn't care about leading zeroes in hours.

When converting a DateTime to a string, PHP will honor leading zeroes as documented in date().
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