DateTime::createFromFormat

date_create_from_format

(PHP 5 >= 5.3.0, PHP 7)

DateTime::createFromFormat -- date_create_from_format — Parses a time string according to a specified format

Description

Object oriented style

public static DateTime::createFromFormat ( string $format , string $datetime [, DateTimeZone|null $timezone = null ] ) : DateTime|false

Procedural style

date_create_from_format ( string $format , string $datetime [, DateTimeZone|null $timezone = null ] ) : DateTime|false

Returns a new DateTime object representing the date and time specified by the datetime string, which was formatted in the given format.

Parameters

format

The format that the passed in string should be in. See the formatting options below. In most cases, the same letters as for the date() can be used.

**The following characters are recognized in the `format` parameter string**
`format` character	Description	Example parsable values
Day	---	---
`d` and `j`	Day of the month, 2 digits with or without leading zeros	`01` to `31` or `1` to `31`
`D` and `l`	A textual representation of a day	`Mon` through `Sun` or `Sunday` through `Saturday`
`S`	English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters. It's ignored while processing.	`st`, `nd`, `rd` or `th`.
`z`	The day of the year (starting from 0)	`0` through `365`
Month	---	---
`F` and `M`	A textual representation of a month, such as January or Sept	`January` through `December` or `Jan` through `Dec`
`m` and `n`	Numeric representation of a month, with or without leading zeros	`01` through `12` or `1` through `12`
Year	---	---
`Y`	A full numeric representation of a year, 4 digits	Examples: `1999` or `2003`
`y`	A two digit representation of a year (which is assumed to be in the range 1970-2069, inclusive)	Examples: `99` or `03` (which will be interpreted as `1999` and `2003`, respectively)
Time	---	---
`a` and `A`	Ante meridiem and Post meridiem	`am` or `pm`
`g` and `h`	12-hour format of an hour with or without leading zero	`1` through `12` or `01` through `12`
`G` and `H`	24-hour format of an hour with or without leading zeros	`0` through `23` or `00` through `23`
`i`	Minutes with leading zeros	`00` to `59`
`s`	Seconds, with leading zeros	`00` through `59`
`v`	Milliseconds (up to three digits)	Example: `12`, `345`
`u`	Microseconds (up to six digits)	Example: `45`, `654321`
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	Examples: `UTC`, `GMT`, `Atlantic/Azores` or `+0200` or `+02:00` or `EST`, `MDT`
Full Date/Time	---	---
`U`	Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT)	Example: `1292177455`
Whitespace and Separators	---	---
(space)	One space or one tab	Example:
`#`	One of the following separation symbol: `;`, `:`, `/`, `.`, `,`, `-`, `(` or `)`	Example: `/`
`;`, `:`, `/`, `.`, `,`, `-`, `(` or `)`	The specified character.	Example: `-`
`?`	A random byte	Example: `^` (Be aware that for UTF-8 characters you might need more than one `?`. In this case, using `*` is probably what you want instead)
`*`	Random bytes until the next separator or digit	Example: `` in `Y--d` with the string `2009-aWord-08` will match `aWord`
`!`	Resets all fields (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, fraction and timezone information) to the Unix Epoch	Without `!,` all fields will be set to the current date and time.
`\|`	Resets all fields (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, fraction and timezone information) to the Unix Epoch if they have not been parsed yet	`Y-m-d\|` will set the year, month and day to the information found in the string to parse, and sets the hour, minute and second to 0.
`+`	If this format specifier is present, trailing data in the string will not cause an error, but a warning instead	Use DateTime::getLastErrors() to find out whether trailing data was present.

Unrecognized characters in the format string will cause the parsing to fail and an error message is appended to the returned structure. You can query error messages with DateTime::getLastErrors().

To include literal characters in format, you have to escape them with a backslash (\).

If format does not contain the character ! then portions of the generated time which are not specified in format will be set to the current system time.

If format contains the character !, then portions of the generated time not provided in format, as well as values to the left-hand side of the !, will be set to corresponding values from the Unix epoch.

The Unix epoch is 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.

datetime

String representing the time.

timezone

A DateTimeZone object representing the desired time zone.

If timezone is omitted or null and datetime contains no timezone, the current timezone will be used.

Note:

The timezone parameter and the current timezone are ignored when the datetime parameter either contains a UNIX timestamp (e.g. 946684800) or specifies a timezone (e.g. 2010-01-28T15:00:00+02:00).

Return Values

Returns a new DateTime instance or false on failure.

Changelog

Version	Description
7.3.0	The `v` `format` specifier has been added.

Examples

Example #1 DateTime::createFromFormat() example

Object oriented style

<?php
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('j-M-Y', '15-Feb-2009');
echo $date->format('Y-m-d');
?>

Procedural style

<?php
$date = date_create_from_format('j-M-Y', '15-Feb-2009');
echo date_format($date, 'Y-m-d');
?>

The above examples will output:

2009-02-15

Example #2 Intricacies of DateTime::createFromFormat()

<?php
echo 'Current time: ' . date('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n";

$format = 'Y-m-d';
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, '2009-02-15');
echo "Format: $format; " . $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n";

$format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s';
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, '2009-02-15 15:16:17');
echo "Format: $format; " . $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n";

$format = 'Y-m-!d H:i:s';
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, '2009-02-15 15:16:17');
echo "Format: $format; " . $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n";

$format = '!d';
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat($format, '15');
echo "Format: $format; " . $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n";
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

Current time: 2010-04-23 10:29:35
Format: Y-m-d; 2009-02-15 10:29:35
Format: Y-m-d H:i:s; 2009-02-15 15:16:17
Format: Y-m-!d H:i:s; 1970-01-15 15:16:17
Format: !d; 1970-01-15 00:00:00

Example #3 Format string with literal characters

<?php
echo DateTime::createFromFormat('H\h i\m s\s','23h 15m 03s')->format('H:i:s');
?>