Date Formats

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

Used Symbols
Description Format Examples
daysuf "st" | "nd" | "rd" | "th"  
dd ([0-2]?[0-9] | "3"[01]) daysuf? "7th", "22nd", "31"
DD "0" [0-9] | [1-2][0-9] | "3" [01] "07", "31"
m 'january' | 'february' | 'march' | 'april' | 'may' | 'june' | 'july' | 'august' | 'september' | 'october' | 'november' | 'december' | 'jan' | 'feb' | 'mar' | 'apr' | 'may' | 'jun' | 'jul' | 'aug' | 'sep' | 'sept' | 'oct' | 'nov' | 'dec' | "I" | "II" | "III" | "IV" | "V" | "VI" | "VII" | "VIII" | "IX" | "X" | "XI" | "XII"  
M 'jan' | 'feb' | 'mar' | 'apr' | 'may' | 'jun' | 'jul' | 'aug' | 'sep' | 'sept' | 'oct' | 'nov' | 'dec'  
mm "0"? [0-9] | "1"[0-2] "0", "04", "7", "12"
MM "0" [0-9] | "1"[0-2] "00", "04", "07", "12"
y [0-9]{1,4} "00", "78", "08", "8", "2008"
yy [0-9]{2} "00", "08", "78"
YY [0-9]{4} "2000", "2008", "1978"
Localized Notations
Description Format Examples
American month and day mm "/" dd "5/12", "10/27"
American month, day and year mm "/" dd "/" y "12/22/78", "1/17/2006", "1/17/6"
Four digit year, month and day with slashes YY "/" mm "/" dd "2008/6/30", "1978/12/22"
Four digit year and month (GNU) YY "-" mm "2008-6", "2008-06", "1978-12"
Year, month and day with dashes y "-" mm "-" dd "2008-6-30", "78-12-22", "8-6-21"
Day, month and four digit year, with dots, tabs or dashes dd [.\t-] mm [.-] YY "30-6-2008", "22.12.1978"
Day, month and two digit year, with dots or tabs dd [.\t] mm "." yy "30.6.08", "22\t12.78"
Day, textual month and year dd ([ \t.-])* m ([ \t.-])* y "30-June 2008", "22DEC78", "14 III 1879"
Textual month and four digit year (Day reset to 1) m ([ \t.-])* YY "June 2008", "DEC1978", "March 1879"
Four digit year and textual month (Day reset to 1) YY ([ \t.-])* m "2008 June", "1978-XII", "1879.MArCH"
Textual month, day and year m ([ .\t-])* dd [,.stndrh\t ]+ y "July 1st, 2008", "April 17, 1790", "May.9,78"
Textual month and day m ([ .\t-])* dd [,.stndrh\t ]* "July 1st,", "Apr 17", "May.9"
Day and textual month d ([ .\t-])* m "1 July", "17 Apr", "9.May"
Month abbreviation, day and year M "-" DD "-" y "May-09-78", "Apr-17-1790"
Year, month abbreviation and day y "-" M "-" DD "78-Dec-22", "1814-MAY-17"
Year (and just the year) YY "1978", "2008"
Textual month (and just the month) m "March", "jun", "DEC"
ISO8601 Notations
Description Format Examples
Eight digit year, month and day YY MM DD "15810726", "19780417", "18140517"
Four digit year, month and day with slashes YY "/" MM "/" DD "2008/06/30", "1978/12/22"
Two digit year, month and day with dashes yy "-" MM "-" DD "08-06-30", "78-12-22"
Four digit year with optional sign, month and day [+-]? YY "-" MM "-" DD "-0002-07-26", "+1978-04-17", "1814-05-17"

Note:

For the y and yy formats, years below 100 are handled in a special way when the y or yy symbol is used. If the year falls in the range 0 (inclusive) to 69 (inclusive), 2000 is added. If the year falls in the range 70 (inclusive) to 99 (inclusive) then 1900 is added. This means that "00-01-01" is interpreted as "2000-01-01".

Note:

The "Day, month and two digit year, with dots or tabs" format (dd [.\t] mm "." yy) only works for the year values 61 (inclusive) to 99 (inclusive) - outside those years the time format "HH [.:] MM [.:] SS" has precedence.

Note:

The "Year (and just the year)" format only works if a time string has already been found -- otherwise this format is recognised as HH MM.

Note:

It is possible to over- and underflow the dd and DD format. Day 0 means the last day of previous month, whereas overflows count into the next month. This makes "2008-08-00" equivalent to "2008-07-31" and "2008-06-31" equivalent to "2008-07-01" (June only has 30 days).

Note that as of PHP 5.1.0 the day range is restricted to 0-31 as indicated by the regular expression above. Thus "2008-06-32" is not a valid date string, for instance.

It is also possible to underflow the mm and MM formats with the value 0. A month value of 0 means December of the previous year. As example "2008-00-22" is equivalent to "2007-12-22".

If you combine the previous two facts and underflow both the day and the month, the following happens: "2008-00-00" first gets converted to "2007-12-00" which then gets converted to "2007-11-30". This also happens with the string "0000-00-00", which gets transformed into "-0001-11-30" (the year -1 in the ISO 8601 calendar, which is 2 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar).

User Contributed Notes

joel dot r dot geurts at gmail dot com 22-Jun-2017 03:45
When a javascript date object is saved to a database directly, a string with the following format is saved:

Thu Jan 01 1970 07:00:00 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

I read through this article and didn't see any matches for an allowed pattern, so I thought it couldn't work. Then I was encouraged by a coworker to just try dropping the time zone in parenthesis '(Eastern Standard Time)' and lo and behold it worked.

TLDR: dropping the second time zone from a string from a javascript date object saved into a DB, will allow it to be properly parsed.
matt at azoundria dot com 05-Dec-2015 04:07
It's important to note that strtotime does NOT successfully handle any date/time format with the word 'at' in it. (Commonly used.) ie:

September 15th at 6:12 PM

It also does not handle any date/time format with brackets (also reasonably common).

September 15th (6:12:14 PM)

To get around this, and create a more universally compatible strtotime, create your own custom strtotime which first filters these out with a str_replace.

function fullstrtotime ($time) {
  return strtotime(str_replace(array(" at", "(", ")"), "", $time));
}
Anonymous 28-Jul-2015 07:11
Note: the day (dd or DD) is first checked for range 0..31 and only if it fits, the overflow and underflow mechanism may apply. If not, strtotime() simply returns false.
If you need unlimited over/underflow for date calculations (for example 2015-01-40 to 2015-02-09), use mktime() instead.
Mirek 01-Apr-2015 10:14
Note: the day (dd or DD) is first checked for range 0..31 and only if it fits, the overflow and underflow mechanism may apply. If not, strtotime() simply returns false.
If you need unlimited over/underflow for date calculations (for example 2015-01-40 to 2015-02-09), use mktime() instead.