PHP: simplest way to get the date of the month 6 months prior on the first?

Question

So if today was April 12, 2010 it should return October 1, 2009

Some possible solutions I've googled seem overly complex, any suggestions?

Answer 1

Hm, maybe something like this;

echo date("F 1, Y", strtotime("-6 months"));

EDIT;

if you would like to specify a custom date use;

echo date("F, 1 Y", strtotime("-6 months", strtotime("Feb 2, 2010")));

Answer 2

use a combination of mktime and date :

$date_half_a_year_ago = mktime(0, 0, 0, date('n')-6, 1, date('y'))

to make the new date relative to a given date and not today, call date with a second parameter

$given_timestamp = getSomeDate();
$date_half_a_year_ago = mktime(0, 0, 0, date('n', $given_timestamp)-6, 1, date('y', $given_timestamp))

to output it formatted, simply use date again:

echo date('F j, Y', $date_half_a_year_ago);

Answer 3

A bit hackish but works:

<?php

$date = new DateTime("-6 months");
$date->modify("-" . ($date->format('j')-1) . " days");
echo $date->format('j, F Y');

?>

Answer 4

It was discussed in comments but the accepted answer has some unneeded strtotime() calls. Can be simplified to:

date("F 1, Y", strtotime("Feb 2, 2010 - 6 months"));

Also, you can use DateTime() like this which I think is equally as readable:

(new DateTime('Feb 2, 2010'))->modify('-6 months')->format('M 1, Y');

Or using static method....

DateTime::createFromFormat('M j, Y','Feb 2, 2010')
    ->modify('-6 months')
    ->format('M 1, Y');