How can I get today's timestamp in PHP

Question

I tried

$dtToday = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', date('Y-m-d'));

but when I output it

die($dtToday->format('d M Y g:i:s a'));

I still get the time eg "22 Jan 2011 4:53:59 pm". Why is that?

UPDATE

Ah... many people misunderstood me, my bad, I forgot to point out the main point. I created the date with just the date portion, I don't want the time. So I'd expect something like

22 Jan 2011 12:00:00 am

Solution 1

You can call ->setTime(0, 0) to zero out the time portion:

$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', '2011-01-22')->setTime(0, 0);
echo $date->format('d M Y g:i:s a');
// 22 Jan 2011 12:00:00 am

Solution 2

See the documentation for DateTime::createFromFormat:

If format does not contain the character ! then portions of the generated time which are not specified in format will be set to the current system time.

If you do the following function call, you'll get the result you expect:

$dtToday = DateTime::createFromFormat('!Y-m-d', date('Y-m-d'));

Solution 3

Today's start timestamp

$todayStartTS = strtotime(date('Y-m-d', time()) . ' 00:00:00');

Solution 4

You can do this by passing the current unix timestamp as the second parameter to the date function

echo date("Y-m-d H:i:s",time());

Solution 5

Remove this part g:i:s a from your code.

Now, if you want a nice date formatted according to your local, i recommand you to use strftime() function.

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Comments

[user4959001]

the second parameter to date() defaults to time(), so date('Y-m-d') is sufficient.

[Jiew Meng]

actually its not the format, see my update. Basically I am asking why after creating the DateTime with just the date minus the time part, why do I still get the time? I want the date without the time portion

[Jiew Meng]

Sorry, I mean why after creating the DateTime without the time portion, why do I still get the time?

[Jiew Meng]

Sorry, I mean why after creating the DateTime without the time portion, why do I still get the time?

[Gökhan Mete ERTÜRK]

it should be ' 00:00:00' Don't forget the space.