Grab last day of last month in PHP

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PHP last day of the month

In PHP, I am trying to get the last day of last month. For example, today is December 11 2012. So the date I am then trying to grab is November 30th.

This is what I am currently trying to do:

        //this grabs the last daye of this month
        $current_month = date('Y-m-t',strtotime('today'));

        //this should grab November 30th.
        $last_month = date("F, Y",strtotime($current_month." -1 month ")

Instead of it grabbing November 30th, it is grabbing December 1st. Is seems like "-1 month" simply subtracts 30 days.

How do I properly grab the last day of last month?

John Conde · Answer 1 · 2012-12-11T16:42:43.147

5

$datetime = new DateTime('last day of this month');
echo $datetime->format('F jS');

or

$datetime = new DateTime();
echo $datetime->format('Y-m-t');

The first one allows you to format the output anyway you want to. If you want to use a month that is not the current month you can pass the DateTime constructor a valid date format and then the code will do the rest.

edited Dec 11 '12 at 16:42

answered Dec 11 '12 at 16:21

John Conde

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I get `Failed to parse time string` on PHP/5.4.5 Windows. Perhaps it requires the time libraries bundled in Linux :-? – Álvaro González Dec 11 '12 at 16:29
I'm getting a server error and I am running the newest version of php – steeped Dec 11 '12 at 16:32
I modified my answer to use an alternative method that may work better for everybody – John Conde Dec 11 '12 at 16:36

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 11 '12 at 16:22

cal_days_in_month() is what you want. The last day is the same as the total number of days.

cal_days_in_month (int $calendar,int $month,int $year)

$calendar is typically CAL_GREGORIAN

Send the $month - 1 to the function for the result you want.

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 11 '12 at 16:26

You can call mktime() with current month/year and 0 as day:

$last_day_of_last_month = mktime(0, 0, 0, date('n'), 0, date('Y'));

It's documented:

day [...] Values less than 1 (including negative values) reference the days in the previous month, so 0 is the last day of the previous month, -1 is the day before that, etc. Values greater than the number of days in the relevant month reference the appropriate day in the following month(s).

Grab last day of last month in PHP

3 Answers3