PHP Date Exercises : Current month and previous three months

Last update on June 03 2025 12:56:43 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

23. Current Month and Previous Three Months

Write a PHP script to get the current month and previous three months.

Sample solition:

PHP Code:

<?php
// Output the current month and year
echo date("M - Y")."\n";

// Output the month and year for 1 month ago
echo date("M - Y",strtotime("-1 Month"))."\n";

// Output the month and year for 2 months ago
echo date("M - Y",strtotime("-2 Months"))."\n";

// Output the month and year for 3 months ago
echo date("M - Y",strtotime("-3 Months"))."\n";
?>

Output:

Jul - 2017                                                          
Jun - 2017                                                          
May - 2017                                                          
Apr - 2017

N.B.: The result may varry for your system date and time.

Explanation:

In the exercise above,

• echo date("M - Y")."\n";: Outputs the current month and year in the format "Month - Year".
• echo date("M - Y",strtotime("-1 Month"))."\n";: Outputs the month and year for 1 month ago using the strtotime function with the "-1 Month" argument.
• echo date("M - Y",strtotime("-2 Months"))."\n";: Outputs the month and year for 2 months ago using the strtotime function with the "-2 Months" argument.
• echo date("M - Y",strtotime("-3 Months"))."\n";: Outputs the month and year for 3 months ago using the "strtotime()" function with the "-3 Months" argument.

Flowchart :

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

• Write a PHP script to output the current month and the three previous months in order, formatted as full month names.
• Write a PHP function to return an array containing the current month and the three preceding months using DateTime arithmetic.
• Write a PHP program to display the current month along with the abbreviated names of the last three months.
• Write a PHP script to dynamically determine and print the current month and previous three months with numeric and text representations.

Go to:

• PHP Date Exercises Home ↩
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PHP Code Editor:

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