Skip to main content
Date - Dynamic Shortcodes

Explore the functionality of the Date Dynamic Shortcode, a versatile tool for date manipulation and formatting.

Updated over 7 months ago

The date shortcode will return a formatted date. You can specify the date using an English string that is in the same format as PHP's strtotime function.

For example,

{date:now} 

will display the current date.

The format of the outputted date can be specified by passing a format as a keyarg.

{date:now@format='Y-m-d'}

Formats

All supported formats are those of the date function, which we summarise here and can also be found on the official PHP website.

format character

Description

Example returned values

Day

d

Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros

01 to 31

D

A textual representation of a day, three letters

Mon through Sun

j

Day of the month without leading zeros

1 to 31

l (lowercase 'L')

A full textual representation of the day of the week

Sunday through Saturday

N

ISO 8601 numeric representation of the day of the week

1 (for Monday) through 7 (for Sunday)

S

English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters

st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j

w

Numeric representation of the day of the week

0 (for Sunday) through 6 (for Saturday)

z

The day of the year (starting from 0)

0 through 365

Week

W

ISO 8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday

Example: 42 (the 42nd week in the year)

Month

F

A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March

January through December

m

Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros

01 through 12

M

A short textual representation of a month, three letters

Jan through Dec

n

Numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros

1 through 12

t

Number of days in the given month

28 through 31

Year

L

Whether it's a leap year

1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise.

o

ISO 8601 week-numbering year. This has the same value as Y, except that if the ISO week number (W) belongs to the previous or next year, that year is used instead.

Examples: 1999 or 2003

X

An expanded full numeric representation of a year, at least 4 digits, with - for years BCE, and + for years CE.

Examples: -0055, +0787, +1999, +10191

x

An expanded full numeric representation if required, or a standard full numeral representation if possible (like Y). At least four digits. Years BCE are prefixed with a -. Years beyond (and including) 10000 are prefixed by a +.

Examples: -0055, 0787, 1999, +10191

Y

A full numeric representation of a year, at least 4 digits, with - for years BCE.

Examples: -0055, 0787, 1999, 2003, 10191

y

A two digit representation of a year

Examples: 99 or 03

Time

a

Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem

am or pm

A

Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem

AM or PM

B

Swatch Internet time

000 through 999

g

12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros

1 through 12

G

24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros

0 through 23

h

12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros

01 through 12

H

24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros

00 through 23

i

Minutes with leading zeros

00 to 59

s

Seconds with leading zeros

00 through 59

u

Microseconds. Note that date() will always generate 000000 since it takes an int parameter, whereas DateTime::format() does support microseconds if DateTime was created with microseconds.

Example: 654321

v

Milliseconds. Same note applies as for u.

Example: 654

Timezone

e

Timezone identifier

Examples: UTC, GMT, Atlantic/Azores

I (capital i)

Whether or not the date is in daylight saving time

1 if Daylight Saving Time, 0 otherwise.

O

Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) without colon between hours and minutes

Example: +0200

P

Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes

Example: +02:00

p

The same as P, but returns Z instead of +00:00 (available as of PHP 8.0.0)

Examples: Z or +02:00

T

Timezone abbreviation, if known; otherwise the GMT offset.

Examples: EST, MDT, +05

Z

Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is always negative, and for those east of UTC is always positive.

-43200 through 50400

Full Date/Time

c

ISO 8601 date

2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00

r

» RFC 2822/» RFC 5322 formatted date

Example: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200

U

Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT)

See also time()

Adding and subtracting from a date

If you are getting the date dynamically for example from a meta field, you may need the date for the day before it, our a few hours later. You can do this simply by specifying it in the second argument to the shortcode:

The last day for registrations is {date:{acf:start_date} '-1 day'}

You can also specify more than one interval by separating them with a command:

{date:{acf:start_date} '-1 day, -1 hour'}

If you want more precision or use dynamic values, you can do it with the timedelta shortcode, with the sub and add keyargs:

{date:{acf:start_date} @ sub={timedelta:@days=1 hours=2}}

The timedelta accepted keyargs are: weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds.

Date Comparisons

You can compare dates using the comparison shortcodes, for all dates that needs to be compared you should use a format that can be ordered, for example U. Example.

{if: {gt: {date:{acf:start_date}@fmt=U} {date:now@fmt=U}}
[Registration opens on {acf:start_date}]
}

On any day before ACF start_date the message in the second line will be displayed.

Did this answer your question?