PHP Date function output in Italian

Question

I am trying to output dates in the Italian format using date() as follows:

Answer 1

date() is not locale-aware. You should use strftime() and its format specifiers to output locale-aware dates (from the date() PHP manual):

To format dates in other languages, you should use the setlocale() and strftime() functions instead of date().

Regarding Anti Veeranna's comment: he is absolutely right, since you have to be very careful with setting locales as they are sometimes not limited to the current script scope. The best way would be:

$oldLocale = setlocale(LC_TIME, 'it_IT');
echo utf8_encode( strftime("%a %d %b %Y", $row['eventtime']) );
setlocale(LC_TIME, $oldLocale);

Answer 2

http://www.phpnews.it/articoli/ottenere-date-in-italiano/

Answer 3

After a lot of attempts, this is the solution works like charm:

STEP 1: We will set the localization and time zone (upper page)

// ====> Localizzazione

    setlocale(LC_TIME, 'ita', 'it_IT');        // Italiano
    date_default_timezone_set("Europe/Rome");  // Ora

STEP 2: We make a function for easily convert when we need (wherever into page)

//=============== Funzione formattazione data
function f_date_time($f_date, $f_date_info) {

    if (strlen($f_date) > 7){
        $dateToParse = $f_date;
    }else{
        $dateToParse = date("YmdHis");
    }


    switch ($f_date_info) {
        case 1: //20191130
            echo date("Ymd");
            break;
        case 2: //30/11/19
            echo utf8_encode(strftime('%d/%m/%y', strtotime($dateToParse)));
            break;
        case 3: //30/11/2019
            echo utf8_encode(strftime('%d/%m/%Y', strtotime($dateToParse)));
            break;
        case 4: //30/11/2019 15:27:50
            echo utf8_encode(strftime('%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S', strtotime($dateToParse)));
            break;
        case 5: //Saturday 30
            echo utf8_encode(strftime('%A %d', strtotime($dateToParse)));
            break;
        case 6: //Saturday 30 November
            echo utf8_encode(strftime('%A %d %B', strtotime($dateToParse)));
            break;
        case 7: //Saturday 30 November 2019
            echo utf8_encode(strftime('%A %d %B %Y', strtotime($dateToParse)));
            break;
        case 8: //Saturday 30 November 2019 ore 15:27:50
            echo utf8_encode(strftime('%A %d %B %Y %H:%M:%S', strtotime($dateToParse)));
            break;          
        default: //20191130152750
            echo date("YmdHis");;
    }

}

STEP 3: Now to convert your data just use the function (wherever into your code)

$today = "20190320234500"; //Format yyyymmddhhmmss

echo f_date_time($today, 1) . "\n";
echo f_date_time($today, 2) . "\n";
echo f_date_time($today, 3) . "\n";
echo f_date_time($today, 4) . "\n";
echo f_date_time($today, 5) . "\n";
echo f_date_time($today, 6) . "\n";
echo f_date_time($today, 7) . "\n";
echo f_date_time($today, 8) . "\n";

OUTPUT: will be somethink like this:

20191231
20/03/74
20/03/1974
20/03/1974 23:45:00
mercoledì 20
mercoledì 20 marzo
mercoledì 20 marzo 1974
mercoledì 20 marzo 1974 23:45:00

PS: happy birday to me :-)

Answer 4

About the article on http://www.phpnews.it/articoli/ottenere-date-in-italiano/response, the blog suggest an alternative method, but the code is not working, here is the correct code:

function timestamp_to_date_italian($date)
    {       
        $months = array(
                '01' => 'Gennaio', 
                '02' => 'Febbraio', 
                '03' => 'Marzo', 
                '04' => 'Aprile',
                '05' => 'Maggio', 
                '06' => 'Giugno', 
                '07' => 'Luglio', 
                '08' => 'Agosto',
                '09' => 'Settembre', 
                '10' => 'Ottobre', 
                '11' => 'Novembre',
                '12' => 'Dicembre');

        list($day, $month, $year) = explode('-',date('d-m-Y', $date));      
        return $day . ' ' . $months[$month] . ' ' . $year;

    }

Answer 5

it_IT locale has to be installed/enabled by your server admin, otherwise this will not work.

So, Jonathan's solution is probably the best.

Answer 6

I found that setlocale isn't reliable, as it is set per process, not per thread (the manual mentions this). This means other running scripts can change the locale at any time. A solution is using IntlDateFormatter from the intl php extension.

$fmt = new \IntlDateFormatter('it_IT', NULL, NULL);
$fmt->setPattern('d MMMM yyyy HH:mm'); 
// See: http://userguide.icu-project.org/formatparse/datetime for pattern syntax
echo $fmt->format(new \DateTime()); 

If it doesn't work you might need to:

• Install intl php extension (ubuntu example): sudo apt-get install php5-intl

• Install the locale you want to use: sudo locale-gen it_IT