PHP | date_create_from_format() Function

The date_create_from_format() is an inbuilt function in php which is used to parses a time string according to a specified format. This function accepts three parameters and returns new DateTime in success or false on failure.

Syntax:
Procedural style

date_create_from_format ( $format, $time, $timezone )

Object oriented style

DateTime::createFromFormat ( $format, $time, $timezone )

Parameters: This function accepts three parameters as mentioned above and described below:

• $format: It is a required parameters which is used to specify the date format. The following parameters string are used in format.
  1. Day:
     • d and j: Day of the month, 2 digits with or without leading zeros.
     • D and l: A textual representation of a day.
     • S: English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters. It’s ignored while processing.
     • z: The day of the year (starting from 0)
  2. Month:
     • F and M: A textual representation of a month, such as January or Sept
     • m and n: Numeric representation of a month, with or without leading zeros
  3. Year:
     • Y: A full numeric representation of a year, 4 digits
     • y: A two digit representation of a year (which is assumed to be in the range 1970-2069, inclusive)
  4. Time:
     • a and A: Ante meridiem and Post meridiem
     • g and h: 12-hour format of an hour with or without leading zero
     • G and H: 24-hour format of an hour with or without leading zeros
     • i: Minutes with leading zeros
     • s: Seconds, with leading zeros
     • u: Microseconds (up to six digits)
  5. Timezone:
     • e, O, P and T: Timezone identifier, or difference to UTC in hours, or difference to UTC with colon between hours and minutes, or timezone abbreviation
  6. Full Date/Time:
     • U: Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT)
  7. Whitespace and Separators:
     • (space): One space or one tab
     • #: One of the following separation symbol: ;, :, /, .,,, -, ( or )
     • ;, :, /, .,,, -, ( or ): The specified character.
     • ?: A random byte
     • *: Random bytes until the next separator or digit
     • !: Resets all fields (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, fraction and timezone information) to the Unix Epoch
     • |: Resets all fields (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, fraction and timezone information) to the Unix Epoch if they have not been parsed yet
     • +: If this format specifier is present, trailing data in the string will not cause an error, but a warning instead
• $time: This parameter is used as string representing the time.
• $timezone: This parameter is used as DateTimeZone object representing the desired time zone.

Return Value: This function returns a new DateTime instance on success or FALSE on failure.

Below programs illustrate the date_create_from_format() function in PHP.

Program 1:

<?php

// Declare a date in given format
$date = date_create_from_format('D-M-Y', 'monday-Feb-2018');

// Output date in given format
echo date_format($date, 'y-n-j');
?>

Output:

18-2-5

Program 2:

<?php

// Declare a date in given format
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('D-M-Y', 'monday-Feb-2018');

// Output date in given format
echo $date->format('Y-m-d');
?>

Output:

2018-02-05

Reference: http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.createfromformat.php