How to get previous month and year relative to today using strtotime and date

Question

I need to get previous month and year  relative to current date   However  see following example      Today is 2011-03-30 echo date  Y-m-d   strtotime  last month         Output  2011-03-02   This behavior is understandable  to a certain point   due to different number of days in february and march  and code in example above is what I need  but works only 100  correctly for between 1st and 28th of each month   So  how to get last month AND year  think of date  Y-m    in the most elegant manner as possible  which works for every day of the year  Optimal solution will be based on strtotime argument parsing   Update  To clarify requirements a bit   I have a piece of code that gets some statistics of last couple of months  but I first show stats from last month  and then load other months when needed  That s intended purpose  So  during THIS month  I want to find out which month-year should I pull in order to load PREVIOUS month stats   I also have a code that is timezone-aware  not really important right now   and that accepts strtotime-compatible string as input  to initialize internal date   and then allows date time to be adjusted  also using strtotime-compatible strings   I know it can be done with few conditionals and basic math  but that s really messy  compared to this  for example  if it worked correctly  of course    echo tz  date  last month  - gt format  Y-d     So  I ONLY need previous month and year  in a strtotime-compatible fashion   Answer  thanks   dnagirl       Today is 2011-03-30 echo date  Y-m-d   strtotime  first day of last month        Output  2011-02-01

User · Accepted Answer

Have a look at the DateTime class  It should do the calculations correctly and the date formats are compatible with strttotime   Something like    datestring  2011-03-30 first day of last month    dt date create  datestring   echo  dt- gt format  Y-m      2011-02

User · Answer

If a DateTime solution is acceptable this snippet returns the year of last month and month of last month avoiding the possible trap when you run this in January   function fn LastMonthYearNumber       now   new DateTime      lastMonth    now- gt sub new DateInterval  P1M       lm   lastMonth- gt format  m      ly   lastMonth- gt format  Y     return array  lm  ly

User · Answer

If you want the previous year and month relative to a specific date and have DateTime available then you can do this    d   new DateTime  2013-01-01   new DateTimeZone  UTC       d- gt modify  first day of previous month     year    d- gt format  Y      2012  month    d- gt format  m      12

User · Answer

strtotime have second timestamp parameter that make the first parameter relative to second parameter  So you can do this   date  Y-m   strtotime  -1 month   time

User · Answer

Perhaps slightly more long winded than you want  but i ve used more code than maybe nescessary in order for it to be more readable   That said  it comes out with the same result as you are getting - what is it you want expect it to come out with     Today is whenever I want it to be   today   mktime 0 0 0 3 31 2011     hour     date  H   today    minute   date  i   today    second   date  s   today    month    date  m   today    day      date  d   today    year     date  Y   today    echo  Today    date  Y-m-d    today    lt br  gt    echo  Recalulated    date  Y-m-d  mktime  hour  minute  second  month-1  day  year      If you just want the month and year  then just set the day to be  01  rather than taking  todays  day     day   1    That should give you what you need   You can just set the hour  minute and second to zero as well as you aren t interested in using those    date  Y-m  mktime 0 0 0  month-1 1  year     Cuts it down quite a bit  -

User · Answer

I think you ve found a bug in the strtotime function  Whenever I have to work around this  I always find myself doing math on the month year values  Try something like this     LastMonth    date  n   - 1    12   Year         date  Y   -   LastMonth

User · Answer

function getOnemonthBefore  date        day   intval date  t   strtotime   date       get the last day of the month      month date   date  y-m-d  strtotime   date - day days      get the day 1 month before     return  month date      The resulting date is dependent to the number of days the input month is consist of  If input month is february  28 days   28 days before february 5 is january 8  If input is may 17  31 days before is april 16  Likewise  if input is may 31  resulting date will be april 30   NOTE  the input takes complete date   y-m-d   and outputs   y-m-d   you can modify this code to suit your needs

User · Answer

return timestamp  use to format month  year as per requirement function getMonthYear  beforeMonth             if  beforeMonth       amp  amp   beforeMonth  gt   1             date   date  Y    -  date  m    -15            timestamp before   strtotime   date     -   beforeMonth   month             return  timestamp before        else            time  time            return  time              call function  month year   date  Y-m  getMonthYear 1      last month before  current month  month year   date  Y-m  getMonthYear 2       second last month before current month

User · Answer

date  m-Y   strtotime  -1 months        would solve this

User · Answer

if i understand the question correctly you just want last month and the year it is in    lt  php     month   date  m       year   date  Y       last month    month-1 12    echo   last month  0   year-1   year   -    last month  0  12   last month      gt    Here is the example  http   codepad org c99nVKG8

User · Answer

This is because the previous month has less days than the current month  I ve fixed this by first checking if the previous month has less days that the current and changing the calculation based on it   If it has less days get the last day of -1 month else get the current day -1 month   if  date  d    gt  date  d   strtotime  last day of -1 month            first end   date  Y-m-d   strtotime  last day of -1 month       else        first end   date  Y-m-d   strtotime  -1 month

User · Answer

ehh  its not a bug as one person mentioned  that is the expected behavior as the number of days in a month is  often different  The easiest way to get the previous month using strtotime would probably be to use -1 month from the first of this month    date string   date  Y-m   strtotime  -1 month   strtotime date  Y-m-01

User · Answer

I found an answer as I had the same issue today which is a 31st  It s not a bug in php as some would suggest  but is the expected functionality  in some since   According to this post what strtotime actually does is set the month back by one and does not modify the number of days  So in the event of today  May 31st  it s looking for April-31st which is an invalid date  So it then takes April 30 an then adds 1 day past it and yields May 1st    In your example 2011-03-30  it would go back one month to February 30th  which is invalid since February only has 28 days  It then takes difference of those days  30-28   2  and then moves two days past February 28th which is March 2nd   As others have pointed out  the best way to get  last month  is to add in either  first day of  or  last day of  using either strtotime or the DateTime object      Today being 2012-05-31   All the following return 2012-04-30 echo date  Y-m-d   strtotime  last day of -1 month     echo date  Y-m-d   strtotime  last day of last month     echo date create  last day of -1 month  - gt format  Y-m-d         All the following return 2012-04-01 echo date  Y-m-d   strtotime  first day of -1 month      echo date  Y-m-d   strtotime  first day of last month     echo date create  first day of -1 month  - gt format  Y-m-d      So using these it s possible to create a date range if your making a query etc

User · Answer

if the day itself doesn t matter do this   echo date  Y-m-d   strtotime date  Y-m     -1 month

User · Answer

date  Y-m   strtotime  first day of last month

[php] How to get previous month and year relative to today, using strtotime and date?

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