Mktime function to generate time stamp of any date and time - PHP

Mktime function to generate time stamp of any date and time

We can generate time stamp for any given date and time by using mktime function of PHP. This function is useful in doing date calculations like finding difference in two dates. We will learn how to use mktime() function along with date function to generate and check different time stamps. Here is the general syntax of mktime() function of PHP.

mktime (hour, minute, second, month, day, year)

This function takes all these inputs and returns a integer having the time stamp in seconds. Time stamp in second is the gap in seconds between given time and January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT. 

Let us try to find out the time stamp of 1st January 2007, 22 hours and 30 minutes & 0 seconds. We will write this code. 

$d1=mktime(22,30,0,1,1,2007);

echo $d1;

The output of the above code is 1167670800. To check the output let us use date function and use this input and find out the date. 

$d1=mktime(22,30,0,1,1,2007);
echo $d1;
echo "<br>";
echo date("m/d/Y H:i:s",$d1);

As expected the out put of last line is 01/01/2007 22:30:00 

Now let us find out the previous day of the above date. To do this we need not keep day as -1, the 0th day is considered as last date of the previous month. So check the output of this code. ( only the mktime function is shown here )

$d1=mktime(22,30,0,1,0,2007);

The output of this function is 12/31/2006 22:30:00 .