date('Y-m-d H:i:s')

Look here for more details: http://pl.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

With PHP version >= 5.4 DateTime can do this:-

echo (new DateTime())->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

See it working.

Use this function:

function getDatetimeNow() {

    $tz_object = new DateTimeZone('Brazil/East');

    //date_default_timezone_set('Brazil/East');



    $datetime = new DateTime();

    $datetime->setTimezone($tz_object);

    return $datetime->format('Y-m-d h:i:s');

}

Try this:

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

Short answer

$now = date_create()->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Read below for the long answer.

Mimicry in PHP

To mimic the MySQL NOW() function in PHP you can use date_create()->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'). This approach allows you to handle time/time-zone manipulations easier then date('Y-m-d H:i:s'). It is more readable and it works since php 5.2.

$now = date_create('now')->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // works in php 5.2 and higher  

$now = date_create()->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // also works in php 5.2

$now = new DateTime('now')->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // syntax error!!!

$now = (new DateTime('now'))->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // works in php 5.4 and higher   

$now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // works as well, but it's less nice then date_create()

The reason why this works is because the MySQL function NOW() gives the dateTime value in this format: 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'. See here: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_now.
An interesting fact is that it's possible to get the datetime format by running this query: SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'd%e_format', the result could be something like this:

Variable_name     Value     

date_format       %Y-%m-%d

datetime_format   %Y-%m-%d %H:%i:%

The variables up here are read-only variables. So you can't change it. I guess the MySQL NOW() function gets it's format from the datetime_format variable.

date_create()->format() VS date()

The favorable facts of date_create('now')->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') over date('Y-m-d H:i:s') are:

• easier to handle time manipulations


• easier to handle timezones


• more o.o.p.

easier to handle time manipulations

date_create() accepts a relative date/time format (like now, yesterday or +1 day) see this link, example:

$tomorrow = date_create('+1 day')->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); 

date() accepts a relative date/time format as well, like this:

$tomorrow = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('+1 day'));

$tomorrow = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', (time() + 86400)); // 86400 seconds = 1 day

easier to handle timezones

When timezones matter then the usage of date_create()->format() makes a lot more sense then date() because date() uses the default time zone which is configured in php.ini at the date.timezone directive. (link: http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.configuration.php#ini.date.timezone). It is possible to change the timezone e.g. date_default_timezone_set('Asia/Tokyo');. But the downside of that is that it will affect all date/time functions. This problem doesn't exists if you are using date_create()->format() in combination with timezone_open().

PHP supports multiple timezones. The funny thing is that it even supports the Arctic circle, and Antarctica. Have you ever heard about Longyearbyen? If not, then don't worry, I didn't heard about it as well 5 minutes ago. But, the nice thing here is that PHP knows about Arctic/Longyearbyen.

See a list of all supported timezones:
http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php.

more o.o.p.

O.O.P. uses state-full Objects. So I prefer to think in this way:

// Create a DateTime Object. 

// Use the DateTime that applies for tomorrow.

// Give me the datetime in format 'Y-m-d H:i:s'

$tomorrow = date_create('+1 day')->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); 

Then to think in this way:

// Give me a date time string in format 'Y-m-d H:i:s', 

// use strtotime() to calculate the Unix timestamp that applies for tomorrow.

$tomorrow = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('+1 day'));

Therefore I would say that the date_create()->format() approach is more readable to me then date().

Example of date_create()->format()

I use this approach for my projects if I have to fill an array. Like this:

$array = array(

    'name' => 'John',

    'date_time' => date_create('now')->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'), // uses the default timezone

    'date_time_japan' => date_create('now', timezone_open('Asia/Tokyo'))->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'),

);

I was looking for the same answer, and I have come up with this solution for PHP 5.3 or later:

$dtz = new DateTimeZone("Europe/Madrid"); //Your timezone

$now = new DateTime(date("Y-m-d"), $dtz);

echo $now->format("Y-m-d H:i:s");

MySQL function NOW() returns the current timestamp. The only way I found for PHP is using the following code.

$curr_timestamp = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Use strftime:

strftime("%F %T");

• %F is the same as %Y-%m-%d.




• %T is the same as %H:%M:%S.

Here's a demo on ideone.

One more answer I find easy to use:

echo date('c'); 



// 2015-07-27T00:00:00+02:00

This is ISO 8601 date (added in PHP 5) which MySQL uses

Edit

MySQL 5.7 do not allow timezone in the datetime by default. You can disable the error with SQL_MODE=ALLOW_INVALID_DATES, se the answer here for more details: https://stackoverflow.com/a/35944059/2103434 But that also means that the timezone will be lost when saving to the database!

By default MySQL uses the system's timezone, and as long as php uses the same timezone you should be okay. In my case CET / UTC+2.

That means that if I insert 2015-07-27T00:00:00+02:00 to the database, only 2015-07-27T00:00:00 will be stored (but that is the correct local time!).

When I load the time back in to php,

$importedDate = new DateTime('2015-07-27T00:00:00')

it will automatically assume it's +02:00 timezone since it's the default. Printing this will be correct again:

echo $importedDate->format('c');

// 2015-07-27T00:00:00+02:00

To be safe, always use UTC on the server, specify it in MySQL and PHP, and then only convert it to your users locale when displaying the date:

date_default_timezone_set('UTC');

$importedDate = new DateTime('2015-07-27T00:00:00+02:00');

echo $importedDate->format('c');

// 2015-07-27T00:00:00+02:00

$importedDate->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone("America/New_York"));

echo $importedDate->format('c');

// 2015-07-26T18:00:00-04:00

Or you can use DateTime constants:

echo date(DateTime::W3C); // 2005-08-15T15:52:01+00:00

Here's the list of them:

ATOM = "Y-m-dTH:i:sP" ;               // -> 2005-08-15T15:52:01+00:00

COOKIE = "l, d-M-Y H:i:s T" ;          // -> Monday, 15-Aug-2005 15:52:01 UTC

ISO8601 = "Y-m-dTH:i:sO" ;            // -> 2005-08-15T15:52:01+0000

RFC822 = "D, d M y H:i:s O" ;          // -> Mon, 15 Aug 05 15:52:01 +0000

RFC850 = "l, d-M-y H:i:s T" ;          // -> Monday, 15-Aug-05 15:52:01 UTC

RFC1036 = "D, d M y H:i:s O" ;         // -> Mon, 15 Aug 05 15:52:01 +0000

RFC1123 = "D, d M Y H:i:s O" ;         // -> Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:52:01 +0000

RFC2822 = "D, d M Y H:i:s O" ;         // -> Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:52:01 +0000

RFC3339 = "Y-m-dTH:i:sP" ;            // -> 2005-08-15T15:52:01+00:00 ( == ATOM)

RFC3339_EXTENDED = "Y-m-dTH:i:s.vP" ; // -> 2005-08-15T15:52:01.000+00:00

RSS = "D, d M Y H:i:s O" ;             // -> Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:52:01 +0000

W3C = "Y-m-dTH:i:sP" ;                // -> 2005-08-15T15:52:01+00:00

For debugging I prefer a shorter one though (3v4l.org):

echo date('ymdTHisP'); // 180614T120708+02:00

I like the solution posted by user1786647, I've updated it a little to change the timezone to a function argument and add optional support for passing either a Unix time or datetime string to use for the returned datestamp.

Also includes a fall back for "setTimestamp" for users running version lower than PHP 5.3:

function DateStamp($strDateTime = null, $strTimeZone = "Europe/London") {

    $objTimeZone = new DateTimeZone($strTimeZone);



    $objDateTime = new DateTime();

    $objDateTime->setTimezone($objTimeZone);



    if (!empty($strDateTime)) {

        $fltUnixTime = (is_string($strDateTime)) ? strtotime($strDateTime) : $strDateTime;



        if (method_exists($objDateTime, "setTimestamp")) {

            $objDateTime->setTimestamp($fltUnixTime);

        } 

        else {

            $arrDate = getdate($fltUnixTime);

            $objDateTime->setDate($arrDate['year'], $arrDate['mon'], $arrDate['mday']);

            $objDateTime->setTime($arrDate['hours'], $arrDate['minutes'], $arrDate['seconds']);

        }

    }

    return $objDateTime->format("Y-m-d H:i:s");

}

you can use php date function with correct format as parameter,

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

The PHP equivalent is time(): http://php.net/manual/en/function.time.php

You can use simplePHP class to do this:

echo $date->now();

This class also provides many useful methods for date addition, subtraction and comparison. You can check the tutorials page for more examples.