PHP | DateTime createFromFormat() Function

The DateTime::createFromFormat()function is an inbuilt function in PHP which returns a new DateTime object representing the date and time format.

Syntax:

• Object oriented style:

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

• Procedural style:

  DateTime date_create_from_format( string $format, 
                                      string $time, DateTimeZone $timezone )

Parameters: This function uses 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: It describes the day of the month. It contains two 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 is 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 holds the string which represents the time.
• $timezone: This parameter holds the DateTimeZone object which represents the desired time zone.

Return Value: This function returns the new DateTime object on success or False on failure.

Below programs illustrate the DateTime::createFromFormat() function in PHP:

Program 1:

<?php

// Calling the DateTime:createFromFormat() function
// with the format 'j-M-Y' and given DateTime is
$datetime = DateTime::createFromFormat('j-M-Y', '30-September-2019');

// Getting the new formatted datetime
echo $datetime->format('Y-m-d');
?>

Output:

2019-09-30

Program 2:

<?php

// Calling the DateTime:createFromFormat() function
// with the format 'j-M-Y' and given DateTime is
$datetime = DateTime::createFromFormat('j-M-Y', '1-oct-2019');

// Getting the new formatted datetime
echo $datetime->format('d-m-Y H:i:s');
?>

Output:

01-10-2019 11:10:06

Reference: https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.createfromformat.php