How to get current Timestamp in PHP

In this tutorial, you shall learn how to get current timestamp in PHP using time() or microtime() functions, with example programs.

PHP Get Current Timestamp

To get the current timestamp in PHP, we can use date/time functions.

In this tutorial, we will go through the following date/time functions to get the current timestamp.

• time() – returns the current time as a Unix timestamp
• microtime() – returns the current Unix timestamp with microseconds

Get Current Timestamp

time() function returns the current time in the number of seconds since Unix Epoch (1st Jan, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT).

PHP Program

<?php
$timestamp = time();
echo $timestamp;
?>

Output

We can format this into required format using date() function.

PHP Program

<?php
$timestamp = time();
$formatted = date('y-m-d h:i:s T', $timestamp);
echo $formatted;
?>

Output

We can also use a predefined format like DATE_ATOM with date() function.

PHP Program

<?php
$timestamp = time();
$formatted = date(DATE_ATOM, $timestamp);
echo $formatted;
?>

Output

Get Current Timestamp in Microseconds

microtime() function returns microseconds followed by the current time in the number of seconds since Unix Epoch (1st Jan, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT). We can extract the microseconds and seconds separately, and format accordingly.

PHP Program

<?php
$timestamp = microtime();
list($u, $s) = explode(" ", $timestamp);
$formatted = date('y-m-d h:i:s', (int) $s);
$u = str_replace("0.", ".", $u);
$formatted = $formatted . $u;
echo 'microtime() : ', $timestamp;
echo '<br>';
echo 'Unix Timestamp : ', $s;
echo '<br>';
echo 'Microseconds : ', $u;
echo '<br>';
echo 'Formatted : ', $formatted;
?>

Output

Conclusion

In this PHP Tutorial, we learned how to get the current timestamp in PHP, using time() and microtime() functions.