The first day of the current month in php using date_modify as DateTime object

I can get the Monday of this week with:

$monday = date_create()->modify('this Monday');

I would like to get with the same ease the 1st of this month. How can I achieve that?

Here is what I use.

First day of the month:

date('Y-m-01');

Last day of the month:

date('Y-m-t');

Requires PHP 5.3 to work ("first day of" is introduced in PHP 5.3). Otherwise the example above is the only way to do it:

<?php
    // First day of this month
    $d = new DateTime('first day of this month');
    echo $d->format('jS, F Y');

    // First day of a specific month
    $d = new DateTime('2010-01-19');
    $d->modify('first day of this month');
    echo $d->format('jS, F Y');
    
    // alternatively...
    echo date_create('2010-01-19')
      ->modify('first day of this month')
      ->format('jS, F Y');
    

In PHP 5.4+ you can do this:

<?php
    // First day of this month
    echo (new DateTime('first day of this month'))->format('jS, F Y');

    echo (new DateTime('2010-01-19'))
      ->modify('first day of this month')
      ->format('jS, F Y');

If you prefer a concise way to do this, and already have the year and month in numerical values, you can use date():

<?php
    echo date('Y-m-01'); // first day of this month
    echo "$year-$month-01"; // first day of a month chosen by you

This is everything you need:

$week_start = strtotime('last Sunday', time());
$week_end = strtotime('next Sunday', time());

$month_start = strtotime('first day of this month', time());
$month_end = strtotime('last day of this month', time());

$year_start = strtotime('first day of January', time());
$year_end = strtotime('last day of December', time());

echo date('D, M jS Y', $week_start).'<br/>';
echo date('D, M jS Y', $week_end).'<br/>';

echo date('D, M jS Y', $month_start).'<br/>';
echo date('D, M jS Y', $month_end).'<br/>';

echo date('D, M jS Y', $year_start).'<br/>';
echo date('D, M jS Y', $year_end).'<br/>';

Currently I'm using this solution:

$firstDay = new \DateTime('first day of this month');
$lastDay = new \DateTime('last day of this month');

The only issue I came upon is that strange time is being set. I needed correct range for our search interface and I ended up with this:

$firstDay = new \DateTime('first day of this month 00:00:00');
$lastDay = new \DateTime('first day of next month 00:00:00');

I use a crazy way to do this is using this command

$firstDay=date('Y-m-d',strtotime("first day of this month"));
$lastDay=date('Y-m-d',strtotime("last day of this month"));

Thats all

In php 5.2 you can use:

<? $d = date_create();
print date_create($d->format('Y-m-1'))->format('Y-m-d') ?>

Ugly, (and doesn't use your method call above) but works:

echo 'First day of the month: ' . date('m/d/y h:i a',(strtotime('this month',strtotime(date('m/01/y')))));   

                                                                                               

You can do it like this:

$firstday = date_create()->modify('first day January 2010');

using date method, we should be able to get the result. ie; date('N/D/l', mktime(0, 0, 0, month, day, year));

For Example

echo date('N', mktime(0, 0, 0, 7, 1, 2017));   // will return 6
echo date('D', mktime(0, 0, 0, 7, 1, 2017));   // will return Sat
echo date('l', mktime(0, 0, 0, 7, 1, 2017));   // will return Saturday

I use this with a daily cron job to check if I should send an email on the first day of any given month to my affiliates. It's a few more lines than the other answers but solid as a rock.

//is this the first day of the month?
$date = date('Y-m-d');
$pieces = explode("-", $date);
$day = $pieces[2];

//if it's not the first day then stop
if($day != "01") {

     echo "error - it's not the first of the month today";
     exit;
 
}

Timestamp for start of this month and very last second of current month. You can add 00:00:00 or just reference "today"

Alternative:

$startOfThisMonth = strtotime("first day of this month",strtotime("today"));
OR
$startOfThisMonth = strtotime("first day of this month 00:00:00");

$endOfThisMonth = strtotime("first day of next month",$startOfThisMonth)-1;

All those special php expressions, in spirit of first day of ... are great, though they go out of my head time and again.

So I decided to build a couple of basic datetime abstractions and tons of specific implementation which are auto-completed by any IDE. The point is to find what-kind of things. Like, today, now, the first day of a previous month, etc. All of those things I've listed are datetimes. Hence, there is an interface or abstract class called ISO8601DateTime, and specific datetimes which implement it.

The code in your particular case looks like that:

(new TheFirstDayOfThisMonth(new Now()))->value();

For more about this approach, take a look at this entry.