day of the week to day number (Monday = 1, Tuesday = 2)

Question

Does php have a function to automatically convert dates to their day value, where Monday=1, Tuesday=2, etc. Something like this

$daynum = func('wednesday'); //echos 3 

Answer 1

The date function can return this if you specify the format correctly:

$daynum = date("w", strtotime("wednesday")); 

will return 0 for Sunday through to 6 for Saturday.

An alternative format is:

$daynum = date("N", strtotime("wednesday")); 

which will return 1 for Monday through to 7 for Sunday (this is the ISO-8601 represensation).

Answer 2

$day_of_week = date('N', strtotime('Monday'));