Help:Time function

Safer nicotine wiki Tobacco Harm Reduction
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The time function, or #time, is the MediaWiki parser function to display a date/time in other formats. For example (Purge to update):

  • {{#time:j F Y}}                shows: 4 November 2025, the current UTC date
  • {{#time:F j, Y}}               shows: November 4, 2025, the current date in mdy format
  • {{#time:Y-m-d}}                shows: 2025-11-04, current ISO 8601 date
  • {{#time:H:i:s}}                shows: 01:22:38, current time-of-day
  • {{#time:l}}                    shows  "Tuesday" as current day of week
  • {{#time:\d\a\y D}}             shows  "day Tue" as current 3-letter day
  • {{#time:j. F Y|7 May 2013|de}} shows  "7. Mai 2013" as a date in German
  • {{#time:xij xiF xiY}}          shows  "13 Aban 1404" as current date in Iranian calendar

There are over 35 date format codes (see below: Time format codes) to rearrange the day-month-year, or hour-minute-second (such as 'j' for day, 'H' for hour, or el 'l' to show day-of-week). Other letters are treated as literal text, or use backslash to escape the format ('\d' shows 'd'). Parameter 2 can designate some other date/time (in any of several typical formats), while a 2-letter language code can be specified as parameter 3 to translate a month name into another language.

Beyond the Gregorian calendar, the #time function can also convert a date into some other calendars by using x-codes (x_): Islamic (xm), Iranian (xi), Hebrew (xj), Thai (xk), Minguo (xo), or the Japanese calendar (xt). For example, to show the Islamic date, as the month and year: {{#time:xmF xmY}} → Jumada al-awwal 1447.

The #time function can show numerals in some other number systems by using x-codes (x_), including: Hindi (xn or xN), Hebrew (xh), and Roman numerals (xr). For example, to show the current time, H:i:s, in Roman numerals: {{#time:xrH:xri:xrs}} → I:XXII:XXXVIII. See more examples below: Time format codes.

General features

The #time parser function takes a date and/or time (in the Gregorian calendar) and formats it according to the syntax given. A date/time object can be specified; the default is the value of the magic word {{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} – that is, the time the page was last rendered into HTML.

{{#time: format string }}
{{#time: format string | date/time object }}
{{#time: format string | date/time object | language code }}

The list of accepted formatting codes is given in the table below. Any character in the formatting string that is not recognised is passed through unaltered; this applies also to blank spaces (the system does not need them for interpreting the codes). There are also two ways to escape characters within the formatting string:

  1. A backslash followed by a formatting character is interpreted as a single literal character
  2. Characters enclosed in double quotes are considered literal characters, and the quotes are removed.

In addition, the digraph xx is interpreted as a single literal "x".

{{#time: Y-m-d }} → 2025-11-04
{{#time: [[Y]] m d }} → 2025 11 04
{{#time: [[Y (year)]] }} → 2025 (25UTCamTue, 04 Nov 2025 01:22:38 +0000)
{{#time: [[Y "(year)"]] }} → 2025 (year)
{{#time: i's" }} → 22'38"

The date/time object can be in any format accepted by PHP's strtotime() function. Both absolute (e.g., 20 December 2000) and relative (e.g., +20 hours) times are accepted.

{{#time: r|now}} → Tue, 04 Nov 2025 01:22:38 +0000
{{#time: r|+2 hours}} → Tue, 04 Nov 2025 03:22:38 +0000
{{#time: r|now + 2 hours}} → Tue, 04 Nov 2025 03:22:38 +0000
{{#time: r|20 December 2000}} → Wed, 20 Dec 2000 00:00:00 +0000
{{#time: r|December 20, 2000}} → Wed, 20 Dec 2000 00:00:00 +0000
{{#time: r|2000-12-20}} → Wed, 20 Dec 2000 00:00:00 +0000
{{#time: r|2000 December 20}} → Error: Invalid time.

The two-letter language code in ISO 639-1 allows the string to be displayed in the chosen language.

{{#time:d F Y|1988-02-28|nl}} → 28 februari 1988
{{#time:l|now|uk}} → вівторок
{{#time:d xg Y|20 June 2010|pl}} → 20 czerwca 2010

If you've calculated a Unix timestamp, you may use it in date calculations by pre-pending an @ symbol.

{{#time: U | now }} → 1762219358
{{#time: r|@1762219358}} → Tue, 04 Nov 2025 01:22:38 +0000

Full or partial absolute dates can be specified; the function will "fill in" parts of the date that are not specified using the current values:

{{#time: Y | January 1 }} → 2025

Many options are provided.

Time format codes

The following table explains the 35 various codes for date/time formats, plus the codes for months in other languages, and the x-codes (x_) to convert to some other calendars or number systems.

Code Description Current output
(Purge this page's cache to update)
Year
Y 4-digit year. 2025
y 2-digit year. 25
L 1 if it's a leap year, 0 if not. 0
o ¹ ISO-8601 year of the specified week. ² 2025 ³

¹ Requires PHP 5.1.0 and newer and rev:45208.
² 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.
³ Will output literal o if ¹ not fulfilled.

Month
n Month index, not zero-padded. 11
m Month index, zero-padded. 11
M An abbreviation of the month name, in the site language. Nov
F The full month name in the site language. November
xg Output the full month name in the genitive form for site languages that distinguish between genitive and nominative forms. For Polish:

(nominative)

{{#time:d F Y|20 June 2010|pl}} → 20 czerwiec 2010

(genitive)

{{#time:d xg Y|20 June 2010|pl}} → 20 czerwca 2010

Week
W ISO 8601 week number, zero-padded. 45
Day
j Day of the month, not zero-padded. 4
d Day of the month, zero-padded. 04
z Day of the year (January 1 = 0).¹ 307
D An abbreviation for the day of the week. Rarely internationalised. Tue
l The full weekday name. Rarely internationalised. Tuesday
N ISO 8601 day of the week (Monday = 1, Sunday = 7). 2
w Number of the day of the week (Sunday = 0, Saturday = 6). 2

¹ To get the ISO day of the year add 1.

Hour
a "am" during the morning (00:00:00 → 11:59:59), "pm" otherwise (12:00:00 → 23:59:59). am
A Uppercase version of a above. AM
g Hour in 12-hour format, not zero-padded. 1
h Hour in 12-hour format, zero-padded. 01
G Hour in 24-hour format, not zero-padded. 1
H Hour in 24-hour format, zero-padded. 01
Minutes and seconds
i Minutes past the hour, zero-padded. 22
s Seconds past the minute, zero-padded. 38
U Seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT. 1762219358
Timezone (as of 1.22wmf2)
e Timezone identifier. UTC
I Whether or not the date is in daylight savings time. 0
O Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) +0000
P Difference to Greenwich time (GMT), with colon +00:00
T Timezone abbreviation. UTC
Z Timezone offset in seconds. 0
Miscellaneous
t Number of days in the current month. 30
c ISO 8601 formatted date, equivalent to Y-m-d"T"H:i:s+00:00. 2025-11-04T01:22:38+00:00
r RFC 5322 formatted date, equivalent to D, j M Y H:i:s +0000, with weekday name and month name not internationalised. Tue, 04 Nov 2025 01:22:38 +0000
Non-Gregorian calendars
Islamic
xmj Day of the month. 13
xmF Full month name. Jumada al-awwal
xmn Month index. 5
xmY Full year. 1447
Iranian (Jalaly)
xij Day of the month. 13
xiF Full month name. Aban
xin Month index. 8
xiY Full year. 1404
xiy 2-digit year. 04
Hebrew
xjj Day of the month. 13
xjF Full month name. Cheshvan
xjt Number of days in month. 29
xjx Genitive form of the month name. Cheshvan
xjn Month number. 2
xjY Full year. 5786
Thai solar
xkY Full year. 2568
Minguo/Juche year
xoY Full year. 114
Japanese nengo
xtY Full year. 令和7
Flags
xn Format the next numeric code as a raw ASCII number. In the Hindi language, {{#time:H, xnH}} produces ०६, 06.
xN Like xn, but as a toggled flag, which endures until the end of the string or until the next appearance of xN in the string.
xr Format the next number as a Roman numeral. Only works for numbers up to 10,000
(up to 3,000 in pre MediaWiki 1.20). 		{{#time:xrY}} → MMXXV
xh Format the next number as a Hebrew numeral. {{#time:xhY}} → ב'כ"ה

See also

Retrieved from "https://safernicotine.wiki/mediawiki/index.php?title=Help:Time_function&oldid=22728"