How to Use PHP Date and Time Formats in WPForms

Would you like to customize how dates and times are displayed in your WPForms? By using PHP date and time parameters, you can format dates and times in various ways to best suit your forms and your users’ needs.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the most common PHP date and time format characters.

Understanding Date Format Characters

Here’s a table of the most commonly used characters for formatting dates in WPForms:

Format Character	Description	example output
d	Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros	01 to 31
D	A textual representation of a day, three letters	Mon through Sun
j	Day of the month without leading zeros	1 to 31
l (lowercase ‘L’)	A full textual representation of the day of the week	Sunday through Saturday
N	ISO 8601 numeric representation of the day of the week	1 (for Monday) through 7 (for Sunday)
S	English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters	st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j
w	Numeric representation of the day of the week	0 (for Sunday) through 6 (for Saturday)
z	The day of the year (starting from 0)	0 through 365
W	ISO 8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday	Example: 34 (the 34th week in the year)
F	A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March	January through December
m	Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros	01 through 12
M	A short textual representation of a month, three letters	Jan through Dec
n	Numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros	1 through 12
t	Number of days in the given month	28 through 31
L	Whether it’s a leap year	1 if it is a 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.	Examples: 1997 or 2009
Y	A full numeric representation of a year, at least 4 digits, with – for years BCE.	Examples: -0044, 0657, 1997, 2006, 20191
y	A two digit representation of a year	Examples: 97 or 06
a	Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem	am or pm
A	Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem	AM or PM
g	12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros	1 through 12
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
H	24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros	00 through 23
i	Minutes with leading zeros	00 to 59
s	Seconds with leading zeros	00 through 59
u	Microseconds	Example: 654321
v	Milliseconds	Example: 654
e	Timezone identifier	Examples: UTC, GMT, America/New_York
I (capital i)	Whether or not the date is in daylight saving time	1 if Daylight Saving Time, 0 otherwise.
O	Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) without colon between hours and minutes	Example: +0200
P	Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes	Example: +02:00
T	Timezone abbreviation	Examples: EST, EDT
Z	Timezone offset in seconds	-43200 through 50400
c	ISO 8601 date	2023-09-09T15:45:30-04:00
r	RFC 2822 formatted date	Wed, 09 Sep 2023 15:45:30 -0400

Using Date Formatting in WPForms

To use these format characters in WPForms, you’ll typically combine them into a string. Here are some common examples:

1. Y-m-d: 2024-10-21 (Year-Month-Day)
2. d/m/Y: 21/10/2024 (Day/Month/Year)
3. F j, Y: October 21, 2024 (Month Day, Year)
4. D, d M Y: Mon, 21 Oct 2024 (Abbreviated Day, Day Month Year)

Practical Examples in WPForms

Here are some ways you might use custom date formatting in WPForms:

1. In Smart Tags: Use the {date} smart tag with custom formatting:
   • {date format="Y-m-d"} would output the current date as 2024-10-21
   • {date format="F j, Y"} would output October 21, 2024
2. In Date/Time fields: When setting up a Date/Time field, you can customize the date format:
   • Using d/m/Y for a day/month/year format
   • Use M j, Y for a shortened month name format like Oct 21, 2024