514
votes

I am trying to convert a date from yyyy-mm-dd to dd-mm-yyyy (but not in SQL); however I don't know how the date function requires a timestamp, and I can't get a timestamp from this string.

How is this possible?

18
dd-mm-yyyy is the standard format in (most of) Europe at least when you need to present data to users.Matteo Riva
dd-mm-yyyy in Australia and New Zealand tooJonathan Day
mm-dd-yyyy in USA. @stesch: the former is standard in SQL. I'm not sure it's standard in any country. :)Herbert
Actually, the standard is yyyy-mm-dd as according to ISO 8601.Jezen Thomas
The global "Standard" is yyyy-mm-dd, and should always be used by systems wherever possible. The order day, month, year is used by people in most of the world (except USA), but usually with slashes, not hyphens. To avoid confusion, I only separate YYYY-MM-DD with hyphens. Any other date format I will separate with slashes. This keeps things consistent.rjmunro

18 Answers

1126
votes

Use strtotime() and date():

$originalDate = "2010-03-21";
$newDate = date("d-m-Y", strtotime($originalDate));

(See the strtotime and date documentation on the PHP site.)

Note that this was a quick solution to the original question. For more extensive conversions, you should really be using the DateTime class to parse and format :-)

296
votes

If you'd like to avoid the strtotime conversion (for example, strtotime is not being able to parse your input) you can use,

$myDateTime = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $dateString);
$newDateString = $myDateTime->format('d-m-Y');

Or, equivalently:

$newDateString = date_format(date_create_from_format('Y-m-d', $dateString), 'd-m-Y');

You are first giving it the format $dateString is in. Then you are telling it the format you want $newDateString to be in.

Or if the source-format always is "Y-m-d" (yyyy-mm-dd), then just use DateTime:

<?php
    $source = '2012-07-31';
    $date = new DateTime($source);
    echo $date->format('d.m.Y'); // 31.07.2012
    echo $date->format('d-m-Y'); // 31-07-2012
?>
74
votes

Use:

implode('-', array_reverse(explode('-', $date)));

Without the date conversion overhead, I am not sure it'll matter much.

39
votes
$newDate = preg_replace("/(\d+)\D+(\d+)\D+(\d+)/","$3-$2-$1",$originalDate);

This code works for every date format.

You can change the order of replacement variables such $3-$1-$2 due to your old date format.

29
votes

Also another obscure possibility:

$oldDate = '2010-03-20'
$arr = explode('-', $oldDate);
$newDate = $arr[2].'-'.$arr[1].'-'.$arr[0];

I don't know if I would use it but still :)

28
votes
$timestamp = strtotime(your date variable); 
$new_date = date('d-m-Y', $timestamp);

For more, see the documentation for strtotime.

Or even shorter:

$new_date = date('d-m-Y', strtotime(your date variable));
16
votes

Note: Because this post's answer sometimes gets upvoted, I came back here to kindly ask people not to upvote it anymore. My answer is ancient, not technically correct, and there are several better approaches right here. I'm only keeping it here for historical purposes.

Although the documentation poorly describes the strtotime function, @rjmunro correctly addressed the issue in his comment: it's in ISO format date "YYYY-MM-DD".

Also, even though my Date_Converter function might still work, I'd like to warn that there may be imprecise statements below, so please do disregard them.

The most voted answer is actually incorrect!

The PHP strtotime manual here states that "The function expects to be given a string containing an English date format". What it actually means is that it expects an American US date format, such as "m-d-Y" or "m/d/Y".

That means that a date provided as "Y-m-d" may get misinterpreted by strtotime. You should provide the date in the expected format.

I wrote a little function to return dates in several formats. Use and modify at will. If anyone does turn that into a class, I'd be glad if that would be shared.

function Date_Converter($date, $locale = "br") {

    # Exception
    if (is_null($date))
        $date = date("m/d/Y H:i:s");

    # Let's go ahead and get a string date in case we've
    # been given a Unix Time Stamp
    if ($locale == "unix")
        $date = date("m/d/Y H:i:s", $date);

    # Separate Date from Time
    $date = explode(" ", $date);

    if ($locale == "br") {
        # Separate d/m/Y from Date
        $date[0] = explode("/", $date[0]);
        # Rearrange Date into m/d/Y
        $date[0] = $date[0][1] . "/" . $date[0][0] . "/" . $date[0][2];
    }

    # Return date in all formats
        # US
        $Return["datetime"]["us"] = implode(" ", $date);
        $Return["date"]["us"]     = $date[0];

        # Universal
        $Return["time"]           = $date[1];
        $Return["unix_datetime"]  = strtotime($Return["datetime"]["us"]);
        $Return["unix_date"]      = strtotime($Return["date"]["us"]);
        $Return["getdate"]        = getdate($Return["unix_datetime"]);

        # BR
        $Return["datetime"]["br"] = date("d/m/Y H:i:s", $Return["unix_datetime"]);
        $Return["date"]["br"]     = date("d/m/Y", $Return["unix_date"]);

    # Return
    return $Return;

} # End Function
16
votes

There are two ways to implement this:

1.

    $date = strtotime(date);
    $new_date = date('d-m-Y', $date);

2.

    $cls_date = new DateTime($date);
    echo $cls_date->format('d-m-Y');
9
votes

You can try the strftime() function. Simple example: strftime($time, '%d %m %Y');

8
votes

Use this function to convert from any format to any format

function reformatDate($date, $from_format = 'd/m/Y', $to_format = 'Y-m-d') {
    $date_aux = date_create_from_format($from_format, $date);
    return date_format($date_aux,$to_format);
}
7
votes

Given below is PHP code to generate tomorrow's date using mktime() and change its format to dd/mm/yyyy format and then print it using echo.

$tomorrow = mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m"), date("d") + 1, date("Y"));
echo date("d", $tomorrow) . "/" . date("m", $tomorrow). "/" . date("Y", $tomorrow);
5
votes
date('m/d/Y h:i:s a',strtotime($val['EventDateTime']));
1
votes

For this specific conversion we can also use a format string.

$new = vsprintf('%3$s-%2$s-%1$s', explode('-', $old));

Obviously this won't work for many other date format conversions, but since we're just rearranging substrings in this case, this is another possible way to do it.

1
votes

You can change the format using the date() and the strtotime().

$date = '9/18/2019';

echo date('d-m-y',strtotime($date));

Result:

18-09-19

We can change the format by changing the ( d-m-y ).

1
votes

Use date_create and date_format

Try this.

function formatDate($input, $output){
  $inputdate = date_create($input);
  $output = date_format($inputdate, $output);
  return $output;
}
1
votes

In PHP any date can be converted into the required date format using different scenarios for example to change any date format into Day, Date Month Year

$newdate = date("D, d M Y", strtotime($date));

It will show date in the following very well format

Mon, 16 Nov 2020

0
votes

Simple way Use strtotime() and date():

$original_dateTime = "2019-05-11 17:02:07"; #This may be database datetime
$newDate = date("d-m-Y", strtotime($original_dateTime));

With time

$newDate = date("d-m-Y h:i:s a", strtotime($original_dateTime));
-1
votes
function dateFormat($date)
{
    $m = preg_replace('/[^0-9]/', '', $date);
    if (preg_match_all('/\d{2}+/', $m, $r)) {
        $r = reset($r);
        if (count($r) == 4) {
            if ($r[2] <= 12 && $r[3] <= 31) return "$r[0]$r[1]-$r[2]-$r[3]"; // Y-m-d
            if ($r[0] <= 31 && $r[1] != 0 && $r[1] <= 12) return "$r[2]$r[3]-$r[1]-$r[0]"; // d-m-Y
            if ($r[0] <= 12 && $r[1] <= 31) return "$r[2]$r[3]-$r[0]-$r[1]"; // m-d-Y
            if ($r[2] <= 31 && $r[3] <= 12) return "$r[0]$r[1]-$r[3]-$r[2]"; //Y-m-d
        }

        $y = $r[2] >= 0 && $r[2] <= date('y') ? date('y') . $r[2] : (date('y') - 1) . $r[2];
        if ($r[0] <= 31 && $r[1] != 0 && $r[1] <= 12) return "$y-$r[1]-$r[0]"; // d-m-y
    }
}

var_dump(dateFormat('31/01/00')); // return 2000-01-31
var_dump(dateFormat('31/01/2000')); // return 2000-01-31
var_dump(dateFormat('01-31-2000')); // return 2000-01-31
var_dump(dateFormat('2000-31-01')); // return 2000-01-31
var_dump(dateFormat('20003101')); // return 2000-01-31