Styling the date format with date_i18n

Question

I'm in wordpress, I am trying to format the date output. This code use to call the end of the sales promotion:

<?php $thepostid = get_the_ID();
$sale_price_dates_to = ( $date = get_post_meta( $thepostid, '_sale_price_dates_to', true ) ) ? date_i18n( 'M j Y', $date ) : '';
echo '<div class="endsale">' .'<span>'.'Promo end ' . '</span>'.$sale_price_dates_to .'</div>';
?>  

It's output looks like this: JAN 21 2016

I need to style the date and need to give div or span to M, j and Y.

I'm not familiar PHP to get things working.

Can anyone help me?

Thank for any kind of help.

Answer 1

Just use date_i18n in multiple places with PHP date arguments just for what you need:

if ( $date = get_post_meta( $thepostid, '_sale_price_dates_to', true ) ) {
    $sale_price_dates_to =
        '<span class="m">' . date_i18n( 'M', $date ) . '</span> ' .
        '<span class="d">' . date_i18n( 'j', $date ) . '</span> ' .
        '<span class="y">' . date_i18n( 'Y', $date ) . '</span>';
} else {
    $sale_price_dates_to = '';
}