(PHP 5 >= 5.3.0, PHP 7, PHP 8)
DateTime::createFromFormat -- date_create_from_format — Parses a time string according to a specified format
Object-oriented style
$format, string $datetime, ?DateTimeZone $timezone = null): DateTime|falseProcedural style
$format, string $datetime, ?DateTimeZone $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.
formatThe 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.
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);
must be preceded by Y or y.
|
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 zero-like values (
0 for hour, minute, second and fraction,
1 for month and day, 1970
for year and UTC for timezone information) |
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 zero-like values 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.
datetimeString representing the time.
timezoneA 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
timezoneparameter and the current timezone are ignored when thedatetimeparameter either contains a UNIX timestamp (e.g.946684800) or specifies a timezone (e.g.2010-01-28T15:00:00+02:00).
Returns a new DateTime instance or false on failure.
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 7.3.0 |
The v format specifier has been added.
|
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');
?>
The above example will output something similar to:
23:15:03