When working with dates in PHP, what are some common functions that can be utilized instead of creating custom functions?

When working with dates in PHP, instead of creating custom functions, you can utilize built-in functions like date(), strtotime(), and strtotime(). These functions provide convenient ways to format dates, calculate time differences, and manipulate date values.

// Get the current date
$currentDate = date('Y-m-d');

// Convert a date string to a Unix timestamp
$timestamp = strtotime('2022-12-31');

// Calculate the difference between two dates
$startDate = strtotime('2022-01-01');
$endDate = strtotime('2022-12-31');
$diff = ($endDate - $startDate) / (60 * 60 * 24);

echo "Current Date: $currentDate <br>";
echo "Timestamp for 2022-12-31: $timestamp <br>";
echo "Days between 2022-01-01 and 2022-12-31: $diff days";