Create date easily in PHP

The simplest way to create dates in PHP is to instantiate an object of the DateTime class.

$date = new DateTime();
// "2022-12-19 08:33:03.003983"

We can also pass a string as a parameter to this constructor:

// Current date and time ("2022-12-19 08:33:03.003983")
// Default value of the constructor
$date = new DateTime("now");

// This morning at midnight ("2022-12-19 00:00:00.000000")
$date = new DateTime("midnight");

// Tomorrow at midnight ("2022-12-20 00:00:00.000000")
$date = new DateTime("tomorrow");

// Last day of december at midnight ("2022-12-31 00:00:00.000000")
$date = new DateTime("last day of december");

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From a format

We can also create dates from a format that we define.

// 2022-12-21 08:33:03.003983
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', '2022-12-21');

We see here that the hours, minutes and seconds are initialized with the values of the current time. If we want to reset these values to 0, we can use !.

• A date at midnight?

// 2022-12-19 00:00:00.000000
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('!Y-m-d', '2022-12-19');

• But it also works with days, months and years. The first day of the month?

// 2022-12-01 00:00:00.000000
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('!Y-m', '2022-12');

• First day of the year ?

// 2022-01-01 00:00:00.000000
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('!Y', '2022');

• January 1, 1970 🙃?

// 1970-01-01 00:00:00.000000
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('!', '');

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Thank you for reading, and let's stay in touch !

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Comments

[YSF]

:thanks

[fullfull567]

Good reading, thank you so much

[Jimmy Klein]

Thank you for your feedback 🙏

[YSF]

:smile