Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL® and Apache All in One

Q&A

Q1:

How do I go about localizing numbers, dates, and currency using PHP?

A1:

Two functions will prove very useful to you in this regard: number_format() and date(). You have already learned about the date() function. To use it in a localized environment, you simply rearrange the month, day, and year elements as appropriate to the locale (MM-DD-YYYY, DD-MM-YYYY, and so forth). The number_format() function is used for numbers and currency; it groups the thousandths with a comma, period, or space, as appropriate to the locale. Read the PHP manual entry at http://www.php.net/number_format for possible uses.