format a date in to the format month day, year hour:minute:second.fff am/pm zzz in php

You can format a date in the desired format using the strftime() function in PHP. Here's an example code snippet with comments explaining each line:


main.php
// Set the timezone to your desired timezone
date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');

// Get the current timestamp
$timestamp = time();

// Format the timestamp using strftime
$formatted_date = strftime('%B %e, %Y %I:%M:%S.%L %p %Z', $timestamp);

// Print the formatted date
echo $formatted_date;
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In this example, I'm setting the timezone to "America/Los_Angeles". You should set this to your desired timezone using one of the timezone identifiers supported by PHP. You can find a list of supported timezones here: https://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php

Next, I'm getting the current timestamp using the time() function.

Then, I'm using the strftime() function to format the timestamp in the desired format. The format string '%B %e, %Y %I:%M:%S.%L %p %Z' represents the format "month day, year hour:minute:second.milliseconds am/pm timezone". Here's what each part of the format string means:

%B: Full month name (e.g. "January")
%e: Day of the month, with leading space for single digits (e.g. " 1" or "15")
%Y: 4-digit year (e.g. "2021")
%I: Hour in 12-hour format (e.g. "05" or "10")
%M: Minute (e.g. "03" or "37")
%S: Second (e.g. "09" or "52")
%L: Milliseconds (e.g. "123" or "999")
%p: AM/PM designation (e.g. "AM" or "PM")
%Z: Timezone name (e.g. "PST" or "EDT")