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Getting the current year is a common task in PHP, particularly when dealing with dates and copyrights statements. Whether you’re a seasoned PHP developer or just starting out, it’s essential to know how to retrieve this information.
PHP is a powerful scripting language used extensively for web development. Among its many features is the ability to handle dates and times which can be used to pull the current year.
$year = date("Y");
echo $year;
The code above is straightforward:
The built-in PHP function date() is used, it returns the current date by default. However, we can specify a format string to get particular parts of the current date. In this case, “Y” is used to fetch the current year in four digits. Then we simply echo the year.
Understanding PHP date() function
The date() function is built into PHP and can either return the current date/time or a formatted version of it. It takes two parameters: a format string and an optional Unix timestamp.
The format string “Y” is used to get a full numeric representation of a year, i.e., “2022”. There are many other format strings available that allow you to retrieve everything from the day of the week to seconds.
Handling Unix timestamp in PHP
A Unix timestamp, the optional second parameter of the date() function, is the number of seconds that have passed since January 1, 1970, not counting leap seconds. PHP uses it extensively in its date/time functions.
However, if this second parameter is not supplied, like in our current year example, the function will use the current date/time. This is very useful when you want your application to be up-to-the-minute accurate.
Using PHP for Web Development
PHP is a versatile language for web development. With it, you can develop dynamic web pages, work with databases, handle user input, manage dates and times as we’ve seen, and much more.
So, as you can see, the ability to fetch the current year is only a tiny part of what you can do with PHP. Whether you are building a blog, e-commerce site, or a guestbook, PHP is more than equipped to handle your web development needs.
Overall, getting the current year in PHP is a simple, straightforward process. Just remember the format string “Y,” and you’re all set!
