PHP DateTime formatting cribsheet

Describes the placeholders you can use when formatting dates in PHP or with Carbon

Usage with php datetime object or Carbon

Time

Hour

Character	Description	Example
H	24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros	00 through 23
G	24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros	0 through 23
h	12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros	01 through 12
g	12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros	1 through 12
a	Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem	am or pm
A	Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem	AM or PM

Minutes and Seconds

Character	Description	Example
i	Minutes with leading zeros	00 through 59
s	Seconds with leading zeros	00 through 59
u	Microseconds	eg 123456
v	Milliseconds	eg 654

Date

Day

Character	Description	Example
d	Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros	01 through 31
j	Day of the month without leading zeros	1 through 31
D	Textual representation of a day, three letters	Mon through Sun**
l	(lowercase L) Full textual representation of a day of the week	Monday through Sunday **
N	ISO-8601 numeric representation of the day of the week	1 through 7 (mon=1)
S	English ordinal suffix for the day of the month	st, nd, rd, or th
w	Numeric representation of the weekday	0 (sun) through 6
z	The day of the year (zero index for Jan 1)	0 through 365

Week

Character	Description	Example
W	ISO-8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday	Example: 42 (the 42nd week in the year)

Month

Character	Description	Example
m	Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros	01 through 12
n	Numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros	1 through 12
M	A short textual representation of a month, three letters	Jan through Dec **
F	A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March	January through December
t	The number of days in the given month	28 through 31

Year

Character	Description	Example
Y	a four digit numeric representation of the year	2020 or 1999
y	a two digit numeric representation of the year	20 or 99
L	Whether it is a leap year	1 for leap year, 0 otherwise
o	ISO-8601 week-numbering year. This has the same value as Y, except that if the ISO week number (W) belongs to the previous or next year, that year is used instead.	2020 or 1999

** can be varied through localisation

Other

Character	Description	Example
c	ISO 8601 Full Date Time	2020-06-26T13:40:10+00:00
r	RFC 2822 formatted date	Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:41:32 +0100
U	Seconds since the Unix Epoch (commonly referred to as timestamp format)	1593175400