How can I get the day of a specific date with PHP

Question

I want to get the day (Sunday, Monday,...) of October 22. How can I do that?

Accepted Answer

You can use the `date` function. I'm using `strtotime` to get the timestamp to that day ; there are other solutions, like `mktime`, for instance.

For instance, with the 'D' modifier, for the textual representation in three letters :

```
$timestamp = strtotime('2009-10-22');

$day = date('D', $timestamp);
var_dump($day);
```

You will get :

```
string 'Thu' (length=3)
```

And with the 'l' modifier, for the full textual representation :

```
$day = date('l', $timestamp);
var_dump($day);
```

You get :

```
string 'Thursday' (length=8)
```

Or the 'w' modifier, to get to number of the day (0 to 6, 0 being sunday, and 6 being saturday) :

```
$day = date('w', $timestamp);
var_dump($day);
```

You'll obtain :

```
string '4' (length=1)
```

Solution