How to display a date as iso 8601 format with PHP

For pre PHP 5:

function iso8601($time=false) {
    if(!$time) $time=time();
    return date("Y-m-d", $time) . 'T' . date("H:i:s", $time) .'+00:00';
}

Procedural style :

echo date_format(date_create('17 Oct 2008'), 'c');
// Output : 2008-10-17T00:00:00+02:00

Object oriented style :

$formatteddate = new DateTime('17 Oct 2008');
echo $datetime->format('c');
// Output : 2008-10-17T00:00:00+02:00

Hybrid 1 :

echo date_format(new DateTime('17 Oct 2008'), 'c');
// Output : 2008-10-17T00:00:00+02:00

Hybrid 2 :

echo date_create('17 Oct 2008')->format('c');
// Output : 2008-10-17T00:00:00+02:00

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Notes :

1) You could also use 'Y-m-d\TH:i:sP' as an alternative to 'c' for your format.

2) The default time zone of your input is the time zone of your server. If you want the input to be for a different time zone, you need to set your time zone explicitly. This will also impact your output, however :

echo date_format(date_create('17 Oct 2008 +0800'), 'c');
// Output : 2008-10-17T00:00:00+08:00

3) If you want the output to be for a time zone different from that of your input, you can set your time zone explicitly :

echo date_format(date_create('17 Oct 2008')->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('America/New_York')), 'c');
// Output : 2008-10-16T18:00:00-04:00

Using the DateTime class available in PHP version 5.2 it would be done like this:

$datetime = new DateTime('17 Oct 2008');
echo $datetime->format('c');

As of PHP 5.4 you can do this as a one-liner:

echo (new DateTime('17 Oct 2008'))->format('c');

The second argument of date is a UNIX timestamp, not a database timestamp string.

You need to convert your database timestamp with strtotime.

<?= date("c", strtotime($post[3])) ?>