Question: I have been trying to use `date_format`, however as far as I know, it only takes timestamps and then it formats the date in whatever way you want to display it.

My issue is the following, the dates in my database are with the following format:

```
 2012-05-14 // (Y-m-d)

```

and I want to display them as: `June 14th, 2012` or the closest format to that.

Is there any built-in date in PHP to make such transformation?
Thanks!

Answer: 
You could try something like this:

```
$date_string = 2012-05-14;
$formatted_date = date('F jS, Y', strtotime($date_string));
echo $formatted_date;

```
You can use `strtotime()` to convert date into time and then use `date()`. Or you can tell your database how to format date with proper SQL.