imAntony's Blog

Simple PHP Class and it’s functionality.

Today I’m going to show you how to create a PHP class and how it can be used. Most of the references can be found on PHP.NET‘s site. Okay, lets start.

First we need to define the class, Let’s call this one “TIME”.

We will use it to call the time stamp (time()) and we can also convert it into a date and time using the (date()) function.

<?php
date_default_timezone_set('GMT');
public class TIME {
}
?>

With it being a PHP code, you need to also include the PHP tags (<?php and ?>) or if you have short_open_tag enabled on your php.ini you can use the short hand version (<? and ?>) (You can use <?php phpinfo() ?> on a test PHP page and search for it if you are unsure.)
You can see that it has date_default_timezone_set(‘GMT’); above the class; This is used to determine what time zone you want, for a list of them then you can find them here: http://uk.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php. Also make sure that it is outside the function because recalling every time you use the TIME class it could give you quite a few errors.
Now save that as “timeClass.php”

Next we will add a function to the class so that we can get the current time() which starts from January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT, I’m not too sure why that is though.

<?php
date_default_timezone_set('GMT');
class TIME {
public function currentTime() {
return time(); // This is telling what to return when you call the currentTime() function.
}
}
?>
Now that we have the function we can save “timeClass.php” and test to see if it works. You can do it one of two ways:

1. You can create a new page and include this class.
2. Or you can put the code under it, after all, this is just a test.

Option 1:
<?php
include_once "place/where/you/saved/the/timeClass.php" //This is the location where you saved the timeClass.php.
$a = new TIME();
$time = $a->currentTime();
echo $time;
?>

Option 2:
// At the end of the timeClass.php file before the ?>
$a = new TIME();
$time = $a->currentTime();
echo $time;
?>

The above code should display a 10 digit number, mine shows something like:

1335469174

Now that it works we can start on converting the number into a date. We will now be using the date() function that is provided by PHP.NET (check the links at the top of this post for reference points.)

<?php
date_default_timezone_set('GMT');
class TIME {
public function currentTime() {
return time(); // This is telling what to return when you call the currentTime() function.
}
public function toDate($time){ //Now this function has the addition of $time, which basically identifies what variable you want to use to convert for a date. This is good to use when converting time stamps on news posts on a website.
$theDate = date('l jS \of F Y h:i:s A', $time);
//Note: I am aware this is from one of the examples provided by PHP.NET. This is using the date function to convert time $time variable in to a full date, with Day of the week, day of the month, month, year and full time.
return $theDate; // Return the newly set date format, using the given time stamp.
}
}
?>

Now we are able to test this new function, and we will do the same as we did testing the currentTime() function, again there are two options to test it, I prefer option 1, although the code is just the same as option 2.

include_once "place/where/you/saved/the/timeClass.php" //This is the location where you saved the timeClass.php.
$a = new TIME();
$time = $a->currentTime();
$date = $a->toDate($time);
echo $date;
?>
It should give you something similar to what I got:

Thursday 26th of April 2012 02:39:34 PM

And thus brings us to the end of this tutorial, I hope it was descriptive as possible for you to understand it clearly. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this tutorial or anything else don’t hesitate to comment.

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