Formatting a date output - PHP

Question

I'm using the following

<?php
function custom_echo($x)
{
  if(strlen($x)<=150)
  {
    echo $x;
  }
  else
  {
    $y=substr($x,0,150) . '...';
    echo $y;
  }
}

// Include the wp-load'er
include('../../blog/wp-load.php');

// Get the last 10 posts
// Returns posts as arrays instead of get_posts' objects
$recent_posts = wp_get_recent_posts(array(
  'numberposts' => 4
));

// Do something with them
echo '<div>';
foreach($recent_posts as $post) {
  echo '<a class="blog-title" href="', get_permalink($post['ID']), '">', $post['post_title'], '</a><br />', $post['post_date'], custom_echo($post['post_content']), '<br /><br />';
}
echo '</div>';
?>

What I'm having problems with is the $post['post_date'] - it comes out as 2012-12-03 13:59:56 - I just want this to read December 3, 2012. I have no idea how to go about it. I know there are some other solutions that are similar to this, but I'm new to this and genuinely didn't understand them...?

Help?

Thanks.

koopajah · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-04 14:37:43Z

8

In PHP the date() function comes with a lot of formatting possibilities. What you want to do is use this statement:

echo date("F j, Y", $post['post_date']);

Here

'F' corresponds to a full textual representation of a month, such as January or March
'j' corresponds to a Day of the month without leading zeros
'Y' corresponds to a A full numeric representation of a year, 4 digits

You can find more information and format on the documentation here : http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

EDIT: If your variable $post['post_date']contains an existing date you should do this instead:

echo date("F j, Y", strtomtime($post['post_date']));

The function strtotime() will first convert your existing date in a timestamp for date() to work properly.

More info on strtotime() here : http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php

edited Dec 4, 2012 at 14:37

answered Dec 4, 2012 at 14:23

koopajah

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4 Comments

imcconnell Over a year ago

That's interesting - I saw that documentation but wasn't sure how to implement it. I tried that statment, but got January 1, 1970 for all blog entries?

gen_Eric Over a year ago

@user1802256: Try doing echo date("F j, Y", strtotime($post['post_date']));

koopajah Over a year ago

Yep @RocketHazmat is right I was editing my post to reflect this.

imcconnell Over a year ago

That worked! Thank you! This worked as well: mysql2date('F j, Y', $post['post_date']) What's the difference between the two?

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