<?php
// set the default timezone to use. Available since PHP 5.1
date_default_timezone_set('UTC');


// Prints something like: Monday
echo date("l");

// Prints something like: Monday 8th of August 2005 03:12:46 PM
echo date('l jS \of F Y h:i:s A');

// Prints: July 1, 2000 is on a Saturday
echo "July 1, 2000 is on a " . date("l", mktime(0, 0, 0, 7, 1, 2000));

/* use the constants in the format parameter */
// prints something like: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 15:28:57 -0700
echo date(DATE_RFC2822);

// prints something like: 2000-07-01T00:00:00+00:00
echo date(DATE_ATOM, mktime(0, 0, 0, 7, 1, 2000));
?>

Things to be aware of when using week numbers with years.

<?php
echo date("YW", strtotime("2011-01-07")); // gives 201101
echo date("YW", strtotime("2011-12-31")); // gives 201152
echo date("YW", strtotime("2011-01-01")); // gives 201152 too
?>

BUT

<?php
echo date("oW", strtotime("2011-01-07")); // gives 201101
echo date("oW", strtotime("2011-12-31")); // gives 201152
echo date("oW", strtotime("2011-01-01")); // gives 201052 (Year is different than previous example)
?>

Reason:
Y is year from the date
o is ISO-8601 year number
W is ISO-8601 week number of year

Conclusion:
if using 'W' for the week number use 'o' for the year.

If you have a problem with the different time zone, this is the solution for that.
<?php
// first line of PHP
$defaultTimeZone='UTC';
if(date_default_timezone_get()!=$defaultTimeZone)) date_default_timezone_set($defaultTimeZone);

// somewhere in the code
function _date($format="r", $timestamp=false, $timezone=false)
{
    $userTimezone = new DateTimeZone(!empty($timezone) ? $timezone : 'GMT');
    $gmtTimezone = new DateTimeZone('GMT');
    $myDateTime = new DateTime(($timestamp!=false?date("r",(int)$timestamp):date("r")), $gmtTimezone);
    $offset = $userTimezone->getOffset($myDateTime);
    return date($format, ($timestamp!=false?(int)$timestamp:$myDateTime->format('U')) + $offset);
}

/* Example */
echo 'System Date/Time: '.date("Y-m-d | h:i:sa").'<br>';
echo 'New York Date/Time: '._date("Y-m-d | h:i:sa", false, 'America/New_York').'<br>';
echo 'Belgrade Date/Time: '._date("Y-m-d | h:i:sa", false, 'Europe/Belgrade').'<br>';
echo 'Belgrade Date/Time: '._date("Y-m-d | h:i:sa", 514640700, 'Europe/Belgrade').'<br>';
?>
This is the best and fastest solution for this problem. Working almost identical to date() function only as a supplement has the time zone option.

For HTML5 datetime-local HTML input controls (http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/input.datetime-local.html) use format example: 1996-12-19T16:39:57

To generate this, escape the 'T', as shown below:

<?php
date('Y-m-d\TH:i:s');
?>

this how you make an HTML5 <time> tag correctly

<?php

echo '<time datetime="'.date('c').'">'.date('Y - m - d').'</time>';

?>

in the "datetime" attribute you should put a machine-readable value which represent time , the best value is a full time/date with ISO 8601 ( date('c') ) ,,, the attr will be hidden from users

and it doesn't really matter what you put as a shown value to the user,, any date/time format is okay !

This is very good for SEO especially search engines like Google .

If timestamp is a string, date converts it to an integer in a possibly unexpected way:

<?php
echo (int)'0x10'; //0
echo intval('0x10'); //0
echo date('s', '0x10'); //gives 16
//however, no octal conversion:
echo date('s', '010'); //gives 10
?>

(PHP 5.6.16)

I just wanted to emphasise that the return value of date( ) is a string, even when the result of your date format string is a number, such as "j" -> a number 1 to 31, or 'N' -> a day number 1 for Monday through 7 for Sunday... it's still returned as a string! "1" or "7" or "31". This is much more obvious on the "zero-padded" results, but it's worth repeating.

If you aren't careful, you can get stuck in a while loop comparing days of the week with something like:

<?php
  // Evil! Don't use this! This will never return!
   while ( date('N', $time ) !== 7 ) {
        $time = $time - 86400;
   }
?>

... for example. The result of date( ) should be cast to an int for numeric comparison with the exact equality operator:

<?php
  // Works!
   while ( (int)date('N', $time ) !== 7 ) {
        $time = $time - 86400;
   }
?>

Wasted an hour today on that silly mistake.

Thanks to tcasparr at gmail dot com for the great idea (at least for me) ;)
I changed the code a little to replicate the functionality of date_parse_from_format, once I don't have PHP 5.3.0 yet. This might be useful for someone. Hope you don't mind changing your code tcasparr at gmail dot com.

<?php
/*******************************************************
* Simple function to take in a date format and return array of associated
* formats for each date element
*
* @return array
* @param string $strFormat
*
* Example: Y/m/d g:i:s becomes
* Array
* (
*     [year] => Y
*     [month] => m
*     [day] => d
*     [hour] => g
*     [minute] => i
*     [second] => s
* )
*
*  This function is needed for  PHP < 5.3.0
********************************************************/
function dateParseFromFormat($stFormat, $stData)
{
    $aDataRet = array();
    $aPieces = split('[:/.\ \-]', $stFormat);
    $aDatePart = split('[:/.\ \-]', $stData);
    foreach($aPieces as $key=>$chPiece)   
    {
        switch ($chPiece)
        {
            case 'd':
            case 'j':
                $aDataRet['day'] = $aDatePart[$key];
                break;
               
            case 'F':
            case 'M':
            case 'm':
            case 'n':
                $aDataRet['month'] = $aDatePart[$key];
                break;
               
            case 'o':
            case 'Y':
            case 'y':
                $aDataRet['year'] = $aDatePart[$key];
                break;
           
            case 'g':
            case 'G':
            case 'h':
            case 'H':
                $aDataRet['hour'] = $aDatePart[$key];
                break;   
               
            case 'i':
                $aDataRet['minute'] = $aDatePart[$key];
                break;
               
            case 's':
                $aDataRet['second'] = $aDatePart[$key];
                break;           
        }
       
    }
    return $aDataRet;
}
?>

Also, if you need to change the format of dates:

<?php
function changeDateFormat($stDate,$stFormatFrom,$stFormatTo)
{
  // When PHP 5.3.0 becomes available to me
  //$date = date_parse_from_format($stFormatFrom,$stDate);
  //For now I use the function above
  $date = dateParseFromFormat($stFormatFrom,$stDate);
  return date($stFormatTo,mktime($date['hour'],
                                    $date['minute'],
                                    $date['second'],
                                    $date['month'],
                                    $date['day'],
                                    $date['year']));
}

?>

If you want to use HTML5's <date> tag, the following code will generate the machine-readable value for the 'datetime' attribute:

<?php

/**
* formats the date passed into format required by 'datetime' attribute of <date> tag
* if no intDate supplied, uses current date.
* @param intDate integer optional
* @return string
**/
function getDateTimeValue( $intDate = null ) {

    $strFormat = 'Y-m-d\TH:i:s.uP';
    $strDate = $intDate ? date( $strFormat, $intDate ) : date( $strFormat ) ;
   
    return $strDate;
}

echo getDateTimeValue();

?>

FYI: there's a list of constants with predefined formats on the DateTime object, for example instead of outputting ISO 8601 dates with:

<?php
echo date('c');
?>

or

<?php
echo date('Y-m-d\TH:i:sO');
?>

You can use

<?php
echo date(DateTime::ISO8601);
?>

instead, which is much easier to read.

<?php
/**
* Convert a strftime format to a date format
*
* Unsupported strftime formats : %U, %W, %C, %g, %r, %R, %T, %X, %c, %D, %F, %x
* Unsupported date formats : S, n, t, L, B, G, u, e, I, P, Z, c, r
*
* @param string $strftimeFormat a strftime format
* @return string
*/
function strftimeFormatToDate($strftimeFormat) {

    $caracs = array(
        "%d" => "d",
        "%a" => "D",
        "%e" => "j",
        "%A" => "l",
        "%u" => "N",
        "%w" => "w",
        "%j" => "z",
        "%V" => "W",
        "%B" => "F",
        "%m" => "m",
        "%b" => "M",
        "%G" => "o",
        "%Y" => "Y",
        "%y" => "y",
        "%P" => "a",
        "%p" => "A",
        "%l" => "g",
        "%I" => "h",
        "%H" => "H",
        "%M" => "i",
        "%S" => "s",
        "%z" => "O",
        "%Z" => "T",
        "%s" => "U",
    );
    return strtr((string)$strftimeFormat, $caracs);
}

$strftimeFormat = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S';
$formatDate = strftimeFormatToDate($strftimeFormat); // Y-m-d H:i:s
?>

Here's my solution for looking up the month number by name (used when parsing an 'ls'):

<?php
  for($m=1;$m<=12;$m++){
    $month=date("M",mktime(0,0,0,$m,1,2000));
    $mon["$month"]=$m;
  }
?>

It's common for us to overthink the complexity of date/time calculations and underthink the power and flexibility of PHP's built-in functions.  Consider http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php#108613

<?php
function get_time_string($seconds)
{
    return date('H:i:s', strtotime("2000-01-01 + $seconds SECONDS"));
}

In order to determine if a year is a leap year an earlier poster suggested simply checking to see if the year is a multiple of four:

<?php
function is_leapyear_broken($year = 2004) {
return ($year%4)==0;
}
?>

While this will work for the majority of years it will not work on years that are multiples of 100 but not multiples of 400 i.e.(2100).
A function not using php's date() function that will also account for this small anomaly in leap years:

<?php
function is_leapyear_working($year = 2004) {
    if((($year%4==0) && ($year%100!=0)) || $year%400==0) {
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}
?>

While is_leapyear_working will not return true for the few non-leap years divisible by four I couldn't tell you if this is more or less efficient than using php's date() as an even earlier poster suggested:

<?php
function is_leapyear($year = 2004) {
$is_leap = date('L', strtotime("$year-1-1"));
return $is_leap;
}
?>

Correct format for a MySQL DATETIME column is
<?php $mysqltime = date ("Y-m-d H:i:s", $phptime); ?>

The following function will return the date (on the Gregorian calendar) for Orthodox Easter (Pascha).  Note that incorrect results will be returned for years less than 1601 or greater than 2399. This is because the Julian calendar (from which the Easter date is calculated) deviates from the Gregorian by one day for each century-year that is NOT a leap-year, i.e. the century is divisible by 4 but not by 10.  (In the old Julian reckoning, EVERY 4th year was a leap-year.)

This algorithm was first proposed by the mathematician/physicist Gauss.  Its complexity derives from the fact that the calculation is based on a combination of solar and lunar calendars.

<?php
function getOrthodoxEaster($date){
  /*
   Takes any Gregorian date and returns the Gregorian
   date of Orthodox Easter for that year.
  */
  $year = date("Y", $date);
  $r1 = $year % 19;
  $r2 = $year % 4;
  $r3 = $year % 7;
  $ra = 19 * $r1 + 16;
  $r4 = $ra % 30;
  $rb = 2 * $r2 + 4 * $r3 + 6 * $r4;
  $r5 = $rb % 7;
  $rc = $r4 + $r5;
  //Orthodox Easter for this year will fall $rc days after April 3
  return strtotime("3 April $year + $rc days");
}
?>

I've been flicking through the comments looking for some succinct date code and have noticed an alarming number of questions and over-burdened examples related to date mathematics. One of the most useful skills you can utilize when performing date math is taking full advantage of the UNIX timestamp. The UNIX timestamp was built for this kind of work.

An example of this relates to a comment made by james at bandit-dot-co-dot-en-zed. James was looking for a way to calculate the number of days which have passed since a certain date. Rather than using mktime() and a loop, James can subtract the current timestamp from the timestamp of the date in question and divide that by the number of seconds in a day:
<?php
$days = floor((time() - strtotime("01-Jan-2006"))/86400);
print("$days days have passed.\n");
?>

Another usage could find itself in a class submitted by Kyle M Hall which aids in the creation of timestamps from the recent past for use with MySQL. Rather than the looping and fine tuning of a date, Kyle can use the raw UNIX timestamps (this is untested code):
<?php
$ago = 14; // days
$timestamp = time() - ($ago * 86400);
?>

Hopefully these two examples of "UNIX-style" timestamp usage will help those finding date mathematics more elusive than it should be.

I use the function below to calculate the Unix timestamp of the start of a week. It includes a boolean flag to request a GMT offset instead of the current locale setting.

<?php

function getWeekOffsetTimestamp($year, $week, $useGmt = false) {
        if ($useGmt) {
                // Backup timezone and set to GMT
                $timezoneSettingBackup = date_default_timezone_get();
                date_default_timezone_set("GMT");
        }

        // According to ISO-8601, January 4th is always in week 1
        $halfwayTheWeek = strtotime($year."0104 +".($week - 1)." weeks");

        // Subtract days to Monday
        $dayOfTheWeek = date("N", $halfwayTheWeek);
        $daysToSubtract = $dayOfTheWeek - 1;

        // Calculate the week's timestamp
        $unixTimestamp = strtotime("-$daysToSubtract day", $halfwayTheWeek);

        if ($useGmt) {
                // Reset timezone to backup
                date_default_timezone_set($timezoneSettingBackup);
        }

        return $unixTimestamp;
}

?>

This function will add working day to a given timestamp

<?php
function addworkinday($timestamp,$daystoadd){
    
     $dayoftheweek = date("N",$timestamp);
     $sum =$dayoftheweek +$daystoadd;
    
while ($sum >= 6) {
    
     $daystoadd=$daystoadd+1;
    $sum=$sum-1;
}
return $timestamp +(60*60*24*$daystoadd);

}
?>

Most spreadsheet programs have a rather nice little built-in function called NETWORKDAYS to calculate the number of business days (i.e. Monday-Friday, excluding holidays) between any two given dates. I couldn't find a simple way to do that in PHP, so I threw this together. It replicates the functionality of OpenOffice's NETWORKDAYS function - you give it a start date, an end date, and an array of any holidays you want skipped, and it'll tell you the number of business days (inclusive of the start and end days!) between them.

I've tested it pretty strenuously but date arithmetic is complicated and there's always the possibility I missed something, so please feel free to check my math.

The function could certainly be made much more powerful, to allow you to set different days to be ignored (e.g. "skip all Fridays and Saturdays but include Sundays") or to set up dates that should always be skipped (e.g. "skip July 4th in any year, skip the first Monday in September in any year"). But that's a project for another time.

<?php

function networkdays($s, $e, $holidays = array()) {
    // If the start and end dates are given in the wrong order, flip them.   
    if ($s > $e)
        return networkdays($e, $s, $holidays);

    // Find the ISO-8601 day of the week for the two dates.
    $sd = date("N", $s);
    $ed = date("N", $e);

    // Find the number of weeks between the dates.
    $w = floor(($e - $s)/(86400*7));    # Divide the difference in the two times by seven days to get the number of weeks.
    if ($ed >= $sd) { $w--; }        # If the end date falls on the same day of the week or a later day of the week than the start date, subtract a week.

    // Calculate net working days.
    $nwd = max(6 - $sd, 0);    # If the start day is Saturday or Sunday, add zero, otherewise add six minus the weekday number.
    $nwd += min($ed, 5);    # If the end day is Saturday or Sunday, add five, otherwise add the weekday number.
    $nwd += $w * 5;        # Add five days for each week in between.

    // Iterate through the array of holidays. For each holiday between the start and end dates that isn't a Saturday or a Sunday, remove one day.
    foreach ($holidays as $h) {
        $h = strtotime($h);
        if ($h > $s && $h < $e && date("N", $h) < 6)
            $nwd--;
    }

    return $nwd;
}

$start = strtotime("1 January 2010");
$end = strtotime("13 December 2010");

// Add as many holidays as desired.
$holidays = array();
$holidays[] = "4 July 2010";            // Falls on a Sunday; doesn't affect count
$holidays[] = "6 September 2010";        // Falls on a Monday; reduces count by one

echo networkdays($start, $end, $holidays);    // Returns 246

?>

Or, if you just want to know how many work days there are in any given year, here's a quick function for that one:

<?php

function workdaysinyear($y) {
    $j1 = mktime(0,0,0,1,1,$y);
    if (date("L", $j1)) {
        if (date("N", $j1) == 6)
            return 260;
        elseif (date("N", $j1) == 5 or date("N", $j1) == 7)
            return 261;
        else
            return 262;
    }
    else {
        if (date("N", $j1) == 6 or date("N", $j1) == 7)
            return 260;
        else
            return 261;
    }
}

?>

When using 'U' to return a UNIX time stamp, you may not get what you expect. In the following example, we try to get the current Unix time stamp for a user in a different timezone.

<?php
// Doesn't work
$timezone = new \DateTimeZone($userTimeZone);
$date = new \DateTime('@' . time(), $timezone);
$date->setTimezone($timezone);
$now = $date->format('U');
?>

$now will return the same (the server's current) Unix time stamp regardless which timezone your user is in.

To get the actual Unix time stamp based on a time zone, replace format('U') as in the following example;

<?php
// This works
$timezone = new \DateTimeZone($userTimeZone);
$date = new \DateTime('@' . time(), $timezone);
$date->setTimezone($timezone);
$now = $date->getTimestamp() + $date->getOffset();
?>

To quickly convert date("N") to a 0 based index with Sunday being represented as 0, you can run it against modulus 7:

<?php
$first_of_month_index = date('N', strtotime('4/1/1990')) % 7;
?>

To actually make use ot the "u" (microsecond) you need to use the DateTime object and not the date() function.

For example

<?php
$t = microtime(true);
$micro = sprintf("%06d",($t - floor($t)) * 1000000);
$d = new DateTime( date('Y-m-d H:i:s.'.$micro,$t) );

print $d->format("Y-m-d H:i:s.u");
?>

Here is a cool Date class to implement the date function:

<?php
/*
* @author    Gchats
*
* Date class
*/
class Date
{   
    private $shortDateFormat = "F j, Y";
    private $longDateFormat = "F j, Y, g:i a";
    private $timestamp = 0;
   
    /**
    * Default constructor
    *
    * @param    integer        $timestamp    unix time stamp
    */
    function __construct($timestamp = 0)
    {
        $this->timestamp = $timestamp;
    }
   
    /**
    * Returns the given timestamp in the constructor
    *
    * @return    integer        time stamp
    */
    public function getTime()
    {
        return (int) $this->timestamp;
    }
   
    /*
     * Returns long formatted date of the given timestamp
     *
     * @access public
     * @return     string    Long formatted date
     */
    public function long()
    {
        if ( $this->timestamp > 0 )
        {
            return date ( $this->longDateFormat , $this->timestamp );
        }
        else
        {
            return "";
        }
    }

    /*
     * Returns short formatted date of the given timestamp
     *
     * @access public
     * @return     string    Short formatted date
     */   
    public function short()
    {
        if ( $this->timestamp > 0 )
        {
            return date ( $this->shortDateFormat , $this->timestamp );
        }
        else
        {
            return "";
        }
    }
   
    public function __toString()
    {
        return $this->timestamp;
    }
   
}
?>

Use this to convert the local/UTC hour to the UTC/local hour:

<?php
for($utc_to_local = array(), $offset = date('Z'), $h = 0; $h < 24; $utc_to_local[] = date('G', mktime($h++)+$offset));
$local_to_utc = array_flip($utc_to_local);

echo "2 am local is ", $local_to_utc[2], " UTC";
echo "3 pm UTC is ", $utc_to_local[15], " local";
?>

This is useful when you need to do many conversions. Lookup tables are faster than calling date() and mktime() multiple times.

If you want to compare this week with the same week last year, here is some code to get you the time at the beginning of the week.  You can then add days, hours, etc to get to the day of the week that you want to know about.

<?php
        $time_passed = (date('N')-1)* 24 * 3600; // time since start of week in days
        $startOfWeek = mktime(0,0,0,date('m'),date('d'),date('Y')) - $time_passed;
       
   
        $lastyear = $startOfWeek - 365*24*3600;   

        // make sure time used from last year is the same week of the year   
        $weekdiff = date('W') - date('W',$lastyear);
        if($weekdiff != 0)
        {
            $lastyear = $lastyear + ($weekdiff*7*24*3600);
        }
       
        $lastyear_time_passed = (date('N',$lastyear)-1) * 24 * 3600; // time since start of week in days
       
        $startOfWeek_lastyear = mktime(0,0,0,date('m',$lastyear),date('d',$lastyear),date('Y',$lastyear)) - $lastyear_time_passed;
?>

So now you have the unix time for the start of this week ($startOfWeek), and the start of the same week last year ($startOfWeek_lastyear).

You can convert back to datetime format easily:

<?php
        echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s',$startOfWeek).'<br>';
        echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s',$startOfWeek_lastyear).'<br><br>';
       
        echo date('l F jS, Y',$startOfWeek).'<br>';
        echo date('l F jS, Y',$startOfWeek_lastyear);
?>

Not sure why this got ignored the first time, but this is an even simpler way to check leap year:

<?php
function isLeapYear($year)
    { return ((($year%4==0) && ($year%100)) || $year%400==0) ? (true):(false); }
?>

Sometimes it is very useful to convert a sql timestamp to an also called NTP time. This is often used as time date notation in XML RSS pages. To convert a timestamp to this NTP notation try the following:

<?php
  echo date('D, d M Y h:i:s O', strtotime ($timestamp);
?>

If anyone needs a really fast function for converting a datetime string (i.e. as retrieved from a MySQL DATETIME entry) into a human-friendly time output analogous to date($format, $time), here's a useful function.

<?php
function fdate($datetimestring = '1970-01-01 00:00:00', $format = 'U') {
  // Create a datetime object, return it formatted
  // If you want to give credit for this somewhere, thanks.
  // You really don't have to though; this is kinda obvious
  $dt = new DateTime($datetimestring);
  return $dt->format($format);
}
?>

The main purpose of this is to reduce lines of code and allow inline coding. For example:
<?php
/* ... */
echo "This page was submitted on ".fdate($row['created'], 'F j, Y g:i:s A')." and last modified ".fdate($row['modified'], 'F j, Y g:i:s A')."<br />\n";
/* ... */
?>

<?php
// A demonstration of the new DateTime class for those
// trying to use dates before 1970 or after 2038.
?>
<h2>PHP 2038 date bug demo (php version <?php echo phpversion(); ?>)</h1>
<div style='float:left;margin-right:3em;'>
<h3>OLD Buggy date()</h3>
<?php
  $format='F j, Y';
  for ( $i = 1900; $i < 2050; $i++) {
    $datep = "$i-01-01";
    ?>
    Trying: <?php echo $datep; ?> = <?php echo date($format, strtotime($datep)); ?><br>
    <?php
  }
?></div>
<div style='float:left;'>
  <h3>NEW DateTime Class (v 5.2+)</h3><?php
  for ( $i = 1900; $i < 2050; $i++) {
    $datep = "$i-01-01";
    $date = new DateTime($datep);
    ?>
    Trying: <?php echo $datep; ?> = <?php echo $date->format($format); ?><br>
    <?php
  }
?></div>

I needed to convet a duration timestamp into H:i:s but whenever I did it kept bringing 5 back as 01:00:05 (due to some DST stuff) so I made this function to replace date(). It has no optimisations but hopefully someone might find it useful:

<?php
    function get_time_string(){
        $time = 3600+(60*32)+(50); // 01:32:50
        $time_string = '';

        $hours = (int)($time/(60*60));
        if(strlen($hours) > 1){
            $time_string = $hours.':';
        }else{
            $time_string = '0'.$hours.':';
        }

        $minutes = (int)(($time%(60*60))/(60));
        if($minutes >= 1){
            if(strlen($minutes) > 1){
                $time_string .= $minutes.':';
            }else{
                $time_string .= '0'.$minutes.':';
            }

            $seconds = ($time%(60*60))%(60);
            if(strlen($seconds) > 1){
                $time_string .= $seconds;
            }else{
                $time_string .= '0'.$seconds;
            }
        }else{
            if(strlen($time) > 1){
                $time_string .= '00:'.$time;
            }else{
                $time_string .= '00:0'.$time;
            }
        }
        return $time_string;
    }
?>

<?php
//date returns microseconds.
function mdate($format, $microtime = null) {
        $microtime = explode(' ', ($microtime ? $microtime : microtime()));
        if (count($microtime) != 2) return false;
        $microtime[0] = $microtime[0] * 1000000;
        $format = str_replace('u', $microtime[0], $format);
        return date($format, $microtime[1]);
    }
?>

echo mdate('Y-m-d H:i:s.u');

2014-05-19 12:41:59.202303

<?php
/* the following variables are set to appropriate
  characters recognized by php version 5 that
  will get the date. To display the date, we have
  to use 'echo' or 'print' to send the variable
  data to the browser
*/

$day=date("l");
$date=date("j");
$suffix=date("S");
$month=date("F");
$year=date("Y");
echo $day . ", " . $month . " " . $date . $suffix . ", " . $year;
?>

rudimentary, simple way to due things, but it gets the job done for someone learning more on the subject.