PHP Manual: Time Formats

Time Formats

This page describes the different date/time formats in a BNF-like syntax, that the DateTimeImmutable, DateTime, date_create, date_create_immutable, and strtotime parser understands.

To format DateTimeImmutable and DateTime objects, please refer to the documentation of the DateTimeInterface::format method.

**Used Symbols**
Description	Formats	Examples
`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."
`MM`	[0-5][0-9]	"00", "12", "59"
`II`	[0-5][0-9]	"00", "12", "59"
`space`	[ \t]
`tz`	"("? [A-Za-z]{1,6} ")"? \| [A-Z][a-z]+([_/][A-Z][a-z]+)+	"CEST", "Europe/Amsterdam", "America/Indiana/Knox"
`tzcorrection`	"GMT"? [+-] `hh` ":"? `MM`?	"+0400", "GMT-07:00", "-07:00"

**12 Hour Notation**
Description	Format	Examples
Hour only, with meridian	`hh` `space`? `meridian`	"4 am", "5PM"
Hour and minutes, with meridian	`hh` [.:] `MM` `space`? `meridian`	"4:08 am", "7:19P.M."
Hour, minutes and seconds, with meridian	`hh` [.:] `MM` [.:] `II` `space`? `meridian`	"4:08:37 am", "7:19:19P.M."
MS SQL (Hour, minutes, seconds and fraction with meridian)	`hh` ":" `MM` ":" `II` [.:] [0-9]+ `meridian`	"4:08:39:12313am"

**24 Hour Notation**
Description	Format	Examples
Hour and minutes	't'? `HH` [.:] `MM`	"04:08", "19.19", "T23:43"
Hour and minutes, no colon	't'? `HH` `MM`	"0408", "t1919", "T2343"
Hour, minutes and seconds	't'? `HH` [.:] `MM` [.:] `II`	"04.08.37", "t19:19:19"
Hour, minutes and seconds, no colon	't'? `HH` `MM` `II`	"040837", "T191919"
Hour, minutes, seconds and timezone	't'? `HH` [.:] `MM` [.:] `II` `space`? ( `tzcorrection` \| `tz` )	"040837CEST", "T191919-0700"
Hour, minutes, seconds and fraction	't'? `HH` [.:] `MM` [.:] `II` `frac`	"04.08.37.81412", "19:19:19.532453"
Time zone information	`tz` \| `tzcorrection`	"CEST", "Europe/Amsterdam", "+0430", "GMT-06:00"