Using the [strtotime()](<https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php>) function combined with [date()](<https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php>) you can parse different English text descriptions to dates:

// Gets the current date
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("now")), "\\n"; // prints the current date
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("10 September 2000")), "\\n"; // prints September 10, 2000 in the m/d/Y format
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("-1 day")), "\\n"; // prints yesterday's date
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("+1 week")), "\\n"; // prints the result of the current date + a week
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("+1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds")), "\\n"; // same as the last example but with extra days, hours, and seconds added to it
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("next Thursday")), "\\n"; // prints next Thursday's date
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("last Monday")), "\\n"; // prints last Monday's date
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("First day of next month")), "\\n"; // prints date of first day of next month
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("Last day of next month")), "\\n"; // prints date of last day of next month
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("First day of last month")), "\\n"; // prints date of first day of last month
echo date("m/d/Y", strtotime("Last day of last month")), "\\n"; // prints date of last day of last month