Introduction

A calendar is a schedule of events. In this article you will learn how to build a web based PHP calendar. I also describe PHP calendar functions in my previous article, and this article shows how to make a simple PHP calendar. Basically a PHP calendar is very useful, you can do things as simple as showing the date.

Example of Creating Calendar in PHP

<html >

<body>

<?php

function create_Calendar($month,$year) {

//array containing days of week.

$WeeksDays = array('Su','Mo','Tu','We','Th','Fr','Sa');

// define first day of the month.

$firstDayOfMonth = mktime(0,0,0,$month,1,$year);

// no of days in month.

$numberDays = date('t',$firstDayOfMonth);

//get first day of month

$dateComponents = getdate($firstDayOfMonth);

// What is the name of the month in question?

$NameofMonth = $dateComponents['month'];

// What is the index value (0-6) of the first day of the

// month in question.

$dayOfWeek = $dateComponents['wday'];

// Create the table tag opener and day headers

$Calendar = "<table class='Calendar'>";

$Calendar .= "<caption>$NameofMonth $year</caption>";

$Calendar .= "<tr>";

// Create the Calendar headers

foreach($WeeksDays as $day) {

$Calendar .= "<th class='header'>$day</th>";

}

// Create the rest of the Calendar

// Initiate the day counter, starting with the 1st.

$currentDay = 1;

$Calendar .= "</tr><tr>";

if ($dayOfWeek > 0) {

$Calendar .= "<td colspan='$dayOfWeek'> </td>";

}

$month = str_pad($month, 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);

while ($currentDay <= $numberDays) {

// when cloumn position is 7 means Saturday then starts a new row.

if ($dayOfWeek == 7) {

$dayOfWeek = 0;

$Calendar .= "</tr><tr>";

}

$currentDayRel = str_pad($currentDay, 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);

$date = "$year-$month-$currentDayRel";

$Calendar .= "<td class='day' rel='$date'>$currentDay</td>";

$currentDay++;

$dayOfWeek++;

}

// Complete the row of the last week in month, if necessary

if ($dayOfWeek != 7) {

$remainingDays = 7 - $dayOfWeek;

$Calendar .= "<td colspan='$remainingDays'> </td>";

}

$Calendar .= "</tr>";

$Calendar .= "</table>";

return $Calendar;

}

echo create_Calendar(01,2013); // calling create calendar function

echo " </br>";

echo create_Calendar(02,2013); // calling create calendar function

?>

</body>

</html>

Output:

create-calendar-in-php.jpg

Note: Here I create a simple PHP function ("create_Calendar()"). You can call this function, as needed. Here I called this function like, for month of January and month of February, like "echo create_Calendar(01,2013)" and "echo create_Calendar(02,2013)", you can set it as needed. In it I create an array which consists of the name of the days. For determining the first date of the month here I used the mktime() function.

The mktime function returns the UNIX timestamp for a date.

For example

If you write like "echo(mktime(0,0,0,1,1,13));" then it will return 1356998400. After that I use the date() function to calculate the number of days in the month. After that I used the getdate() function for obtaining the first day of the month and another process shows step-by-step and when you have finished your function code then just call it by passing the arguments like month and year ("create_Calendar(02,2013)").