In PHP, purpose of date function is to format a UNIX time integer as text according to a specially encoded format string. Here you can see the process for this. We can use different parameters to get our required format.

Syntax:

string date (string $Format);
string date (string $Format, int $Time);

The return value is a string equal to the format string with substitutions from $Time (or current system time) according to the table above.

Example code:

<?php

echo "When this page was loaded,n";
echo 'It was then ', date ('r'), "n";
echo 'The currend date was ', date ('F j, Y'), "n";
echo 'The currend date was ', date ('M j, Y'), "n";
echo 'The currend date was ', date ('m/d/y'), "n";
echo 'The currend date was the ', date ('jS of M, Y'), "n";
echo 'The currend time was ', date ('g:i:s A T'), "n";
echo 'The currend time was ', date ('H:i:s O'), "n";
echo date ('Y');
date ('L')?(print ' is'):(print ' is not');
echo " a leap yearn";
?>

Output:
When this page was loaded,
It was then Sat, 26 Dec 2009 07:09:51 +0000
The currend date was December 26, 2009
The currend date was Dec 26, 2009
The currend date was 12/26/09
The currend date was the 26th of Dec, 2009
The currend time was 7:09:51 AM GMT
The currend time was 07:09:51 +0000
2009 is not a leap year