Translating PHP date() for Multilingual Site

Question

I'm trying to create a conditional translation of the PHP internal date() function. Is it possible to somehow redefine the internal variables - e.g. - date('M'), date('y') etc so that different strings are fed into the remainder of the PHP function on the basis of this test:

if (ICL_LANGUAGE_CODE == 'fr') { }

The following is a working example of the code I'm using for a dates module. Since $date is defined with many variables contained in this definition it's important to conditionally re-define the variables within PHP's date() first in order to avoid having to redefine the variable 100 times or more within each key.

if($start <= $end):
    if($start == $end):
        //Month Day, Year
        $date =  date('F', $start).' '.date('j',$start).', '.date('Y', $start);
    else:
        if($start_year == $end_year):
            if($start_month == $end_month):

                //Month Day - Day, Year
                $date = date('F', $start).' '.date('j',$start).' - '.date('j', $end).', '.date('Y', $start);
            else:
                //Month Day - Month Day, Year
                $date =  date('F', $start).' '.date('j',$start).' - '.date('F', $end).' '.date('j', $end).', '.date('Y', $start);
            endif;
        else:
            //Month Day, Year - Month Day, Year
            $date =  date('F', $start).' '.date('j',$start).', '.date('Y', $start).' - '.date('F', $end).' '.date('j', $end).', '.date('Y', $end);
        endif;
    endif;
endif;

Answer 1

Whenever you need to manipulate date/time stamps based on locale, you should use strftime:

switch ($lang) {
    case 'en':
        setlocale(LC_TIME, 'en_CA.UTF-8');
        echo strftime("%B %e, %G");
        break;
    case 'fr':
        setlocale(LC_TIME, 'fr_CA.UTF-8');
        echo strftime("%e %B %G");
        break;
}

Results:

February 11, 2011  // en
11 février 2011    // fr

Of course, you need to have the locales installed on your system. In Ubuntu per example:

bash-4.1$ sudo locale-gen fr_CA.UTF-8