Returning the current timestamp with the time() function

Returning the current timestamp is easy

print time();

displays:

1020961685

You can see how many seconds have passed since I wrote this by comparing your results. And that gives you a clue as to how we can do date and time arithmetic. By subtracting the two timestamps, you can see how many seconds have elapsed, and once you have that, you can convert it into more friendly formats with some of the other functions.

Storing the current date and time in an array with the getdate() function

The date function is very useful for displaying a date, but is not ideal for returning useful data for your applications to work with. There's a better function to use - getdate(). Given a timestamp, it returns an associative array with the following elements:

By default, it takes the current time, so getdate() is equivalent to getdate(time()). Take a look at the following snippet of code:

$datetime_array = getdate();    //populate associative array

//display time
print "Current time: ".$datetime_array{hours}.": 
".$datetime_array{minutes};
// display all elements of the associative array
foreach($datetime_array as $key=>$val) {
        print "
$key: $val";
}

displays:

Current time: 23: 35
seconds: 32
minutes: 35
hours: 23
mday: 9
wday: 4
mon: 5
year: 2002
yday: 128
weekday: Thursday
month: May
0: 1020980132

Using localtime() as an alternative to getdate()

The localtime function returns an alternative array to getdate(). It is OS dependant however, and uses the underlying C function call. It takes an optional two parameters, the first is the timestamp (defaults to current time), and the second determines whether the array is associative or numeric (0 for numeric, 1 for associative). The array has has the following elements.

Date and Time in PHP
Date and Time in PHP
Generating a timestamp with the mktime() function