 date formatter display the date field can be displayed or formatted several ways some configurable in the date settings others that are automatically provided as options you ll see these formatters as options on the display fields screen and when you add the fields to views you can also use these formatters in custom code by doing something like print contentformat fielddate node fielddate 0 iso  formatter settings in many places you can further control the way multiple value dates will be displayed with formatter settings the formatter settings look like default as time ago long medium short date only time only hidden display from and to dates display from date only display to date only show value s starting from ending on display repeat rule hide repeat rule the number of values should be a numeric value or blank to show all dates that match your other options starting from and ending on can be a fixed dates in iso format like 20090303t103000 or relative times like now or now 1 day  formats and format types formatter options include default the main way to display this date configured in the date settings defaults to the site short format short the site short format medium the site medium format long the site long format time display the date time only using the time format in the default display timetimezone display the date time and timezone using the time format in the default display iso display the date in the standard iso format of yyyymmddthh mm ss ical display the date in the standard ical format of yyyymmddthhmmss timestamp display the date as the unix timestamp value formatinterval display the date as xx days xx hours ago or xx months xx days from now to set up custom formats and formatters go to admin settings datetime formats  you can either use a preconfigured display format or create your own formatters and formats define a php date format string like mdy h i see http phpnet date for more details on custom format strings  