PHP subtract 1 month from date formatted with date ('m-Y')

Question

I'm trying to subtract 1 month from a date.

$today = date('m-Y');

This gives: 08-2016

How can I subtract a month to get 07-2016?

Does this answer your question? [PHP strtotime: Get previous month](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14102625/php-strtotime-get-previous-month) — Theraot, Mar 29 '21 at 05:11

score 73 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 03 '16 at 09:00

73

 <?php 
  echo $newdate = date("m-Y", strtotime("-1 months"));

output

07-2016

answered Aug 03 '16 at 09:00

Passionate Coder

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4

N.B.: before using this example, read the warning about the edge-cases below – Alexey Kosov Oct 10 '17 at 12:55
2

`strtotime("-1 months")` does not work if you have 31 days. – Fakhruddin Ujjainwala Jul 31 '19 at 11:40
as @FakhruddinUjjainwala pointed out I found a solution preventing this with a second strtotime(). Just look at my provided anwser. – Marco Jul 31 '20 at 14:43
1

echo date('Y-m', strtotime('2021-07-31' . ' - 1 month')); check this this will return 2021-07.. similarly check for March 31st or March 30th and even March 29th too if not leap year – rajatsaurastri Jun 10 '21 at 07:14

score 15 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 10 '17 at 12:54

Warning! The above-mentioned examples won't work if call them at the end of a month.

<?php
$now = mktime(0, 0, 0, 10, 31, 2017);
echo date("m-Y", $now)."\n";
echo date("m-Y", strtotime("-1 months", $now))."\n";

will output:

10-2017
10-2017

The following example will produce the same result:

$date = new DateTime('2017-10-31 00:00:00');
echo $date->format('m-Y')."\n";
$date->modify('-1 month');
echo $date->format('m-Y')."\n";

Plenty of ways how to solve the issue can be found in another thread: PHP DateTime::modify adding and subtracting months

The reason behind it does not work is because the following: What's last month of `2017-10-29`? `2017-09-29`. And last month of `2017-10-30`? `2017-09-30`. And what about last month of `2017-10-31`? In theory `2017-09-31`, but this day does not exist, and then it maps onto `2017-10-01`. — Xavi Montero, Jul 16 '18 at 07:37

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 03 '16 at 09:00

8

Try this,

$today = date('m-Y');
$newdate = date('m-Y', strtotime('-1 months', strtotime($today))); 
echo $newdate;

answered Aug 03 '16 at 09:00

Vinod VT

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should have included that this is looping around as I want to get the last 12 months starting from the current month. – Grant Aug 03 '16 at 09:05
You can use it in loop – Vinod VT Aug 03 '16 at 09:06
it will not work and it's output 12-1969 – Sunil Dabhi Jun 01 '22 at 10:20

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 03 '16 at 09:09

Depending on your PHP version you can use DateTime object (introduced in PHP 5.2 if I remember correctly):

<?php
$today = new DateTime(); // This will create a DateTime object with the current date
$today->modify('-1 month');

You can pass another date to the constructor, it does not have to be the current date. More information: http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.modify.php

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 31 '20 at 10:31

1

I used this to prevent the "last days of month"-error. I just use a second strtotime() to set the date to the first day of the month:

<?php
echo $newdate = date("m-Y", strtotime("-1 months", strtotime(date("Y-m")."-01")));

answered Jul 31 '20 at 10:31

Marco

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score 0 · Answer 6 · answered May 09 '19 at 06:00

0

if(date("d") > 28){
    $date = date("Y-m", strtotime("-".$loop." months -2 Day"));
} else {
    $date = date("Y-m", strtotime("-".$loop." months"));
}

answered May 09 '19 at 06:00

Anilbk

1

This code wont skip the february even if am at the month end. – Anilbk May 09 '19 at 06:03

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jun 15 '19 at 20:29

0

$lastMonth = date('Y-m', strtotime('-1 MONTH'));

answered Jun 15 '19 at 20:29

Brennan James

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While this code may answer the question, providing additional context regarding how and/or why it solves the problem would improve the answer's long-term value. – Nic3500 Jun 16 '19 at 00:55

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 25 '19 at 07:35

First change the date format m-Y to Y-m

    $date = $_POST('date'); // Post month
    or
    $date = date('m-Y'); // currrent month

    $date_txt = date_create_from_format('m-Y', $date);
    $change_format = date_format($date_txt, 'Y-m');

This code minus 1 month to the given date

    $final_date = new DateTime($change_format);
    $final_date->modify('-1 month');
    $output = $final_date->format('m-Y');

score 0 · Answer 9 · edited Jun 26 '19 at 11:09

0

Try this,

$effectiveDate = date('2018-01'); <br> 
echo 'Date'.$effectiveDate;<br>
$effectiveDate = date('m-y', strtotime($effectiveDate.'+-1 months'));<br>
echo 'Date'.$effectiveDate;

edited Jun 26 '19 at 11:09

Android

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answered Jun 26 '19 at 10:08

ChinmayW

1

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Dec 29 '19 at 07:53

0

$currentMonth = date('m', time());
$currentDay = date('d',time());
$currentYear = date('Y',time());
$lastMonth = $currentMonth -1;
$one_month_ago=mkdate(0,0,0,$one_month_ago,$currentDay,$currentYear);

This could be rewritten more elegantly, but it works for me

answered Dec 29 '19 at 07:53

Sander Jentjens

1

This won't work if the current month is January – Popnoodles Dec 24 '21 at 17:59

PHP subtract 1 month from date formatted with date ('m-Y')

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