filemtime()

filemtime() — Gets file modification time.

Built-in function of PHP 8.5. The manual lists it as available in PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8. This page is the reference card: signature, parameters and return value, plus the changelog and the example the manual provides.

What it does

This function returns the time when the data blocks of a file were being written to, that is, the time when the content of the file was changed.

Signature

filemtime(string $filename): int|false

Parameters

Return value

Returns the time the file was last modified, or false on failure. The time is returned as a Unix timestamp, which is suitable for the date() function.

Example

A runnable snippet:

// outputs e.g. somefile.txt was last modified: December 29 2002 22:16:23. $filename = 'somefile.txt'; if (file_exists($filename)) { echo "$filename was last modified: " . date ("F d Y H:i:s.", filemtime($filename)); }

See also

filectime(), stat(), touch(), getlastmod()

All PHP 8.5 built-in functions

Reference card built from the PHP manual page filemtime() (PHP documentation, CC BY 3.0). The page is generated from the manual, so the wording of the parameter and return value text follows php.net.