(PHP 5 >= 5.3.0)
DateTime::createFromFormat — Returns new DateTime object formatted according to the specified format
Object oriented style
Procedural style
Returns new DateTime object formatted according to the specified format.
Format accepted by date().
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.
String representing the time.
A DateTimeZone object representing the desired time zone.
Returns a new DateTime instance or FALSE on failure.
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