Get list of localized months - php

Question

Since PHP uses data from ICU in the intl extension, are there ways to get localized month names from within PHP?
While I can get the data from ICU's xml files and extract them into my own set of files, I would much prefer a clean and easier solution if possible.
Finally, are there ways to get the date format (MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY), given the locale from the intl extension?

Answer 1

Not sure what you need the month names for, but if you just want to use translated names for months, strftime() uses the names according to the current locale (use the %B modifier).
If you want a list of month names for some other use you can use strftime() for that too:
$months = array();
for( $i = 1; $i <= 12; $i++ ) {
$months[ $i ] = strftime( '%B', mktime( 0, 0, 0, $i, 1 ) );
}
For the second question there might be a native function for it but it's not hard to make one yourself:
$currentDate = strftime( '%x', strtotime( '2011-12-13' ) );
$localFormat = str_replace(
array( '13', '12', '2011', '11' ),
array( 'DD', 'MM', 'YYYY', 'YY' ),
$currentDate
);

Answer 2

Could you use IntlDateFormatter::getPattern to get the pattern? I don't know about strftime, but I would use the suggestion of formatting with a pattern MMMM to get the month name, through each month. Looks like php.intl doesn't expose the data directly.

Answer 3

(This is not a real answer, it would be a comment to Steven R. Loomis' answer. I write it only because I can't format code in comments)
Thank you Steven R. Loomis, this is my solution:
function local_month_name($locale, $monthnum)
{
/**
* Return the localized name of the given month
*
* #author Lucas Malor
* #param string $locale The locale identifier (for example 'en_US')
* #param int $monthnum The month as number
* #return string The localized string
*/
$fmt = new IntlDateFormatter($locale, IntlDateFormatter::LONG,
IntlDateFormatter::NONE);
$fmt->setPattern('MMMM');
return $fmt->format(mktime(0, 0, 0, $monthnum, 1, 1970));
}

Answer 4

For English or other languages that does not use declination it will work fine, but for all of them that use declination the output will not be valid.
For Polish i.e. the output for March will be marca instead of marzec
For Russian i.e. the output for March will be Мартa instead of Март
This method will not work through ALL languages which most probably is required and may not be easily tested by person not speaking the language.
If you only need names of the months it is better to use:
setlocale(LC_TIME, 'pl_PL');
$month_name = strftime('%B', mktime(0, 0, 0, $month_number));
Please have in mind that locale change may impact other parts of your application.

Answer 5

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'en_US.ISO_8859-1');
and so on