Create date - Carbon in Laravel

Question

I'm starting to read about Carbon and can't seem to figure out how to create a carbon date.

In the docs is says you can;

Carbon::createFromDate($year, $month, $day, $tz); Carbon::createFromTime($hour, $minute, $second, $tz); Carbon::create($year, $month, $day, $hour, $minute, $second, $tz);

But what if I just recieve a date like 2016-01-23? Do I have to strip out each part and feed it to carbon before I can create a carbon date? or maybe I receive time like 11:53:20??

I'm dealing with dynamic dates and time and writing code to separate parts of time or date doesn't feel right.

Any help appreciated.

Solution

You can use one of two ways of creating a Carbon instance from that date string:

1. Create a new instance and pass the string to the constructor:

// From a datetime string
$datetime = new Carbon('2016-01-23 11:53:20');

// From a date string
$date = new Carbon('2016-01-23');

// From a time string
$time = new Carbon('11:53:20');

2. Use the createFromFormat method:

// From a datetime string
$datetime = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', '2016-01-23 11:53:20');

// From a date string
$date = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', '2016-01-23');

// From a time string
$time = Carbon::createFromFormat('H:i:s', '11:53:20');

The Carbon class is just extending the PHP DateTime class, which means that you can use all the same methods including the same constructor parameters or the createFromFormat method.

Comments

[moh_abk]

Can I use option 1 with time as well?

[Bogdan]

Sure you can. The constructor accepts any date and/or time string that has a valid format according to the Supported Date and Time Formats Documentation. So it will work with a timestamp like this 11:53:20 as well.

[moh_abk]

Thanks for the help as always. Does carbon have any methods of rounding up? or how can I round up with carbon after I've added minutes etc

[Bogdan]

Could you provide an example of the starting value and the value you wanted it rounded to?

[moh_abk]

Any time value really. Like '11:53:20'... I would want to round up to the nearest 5 so to '11:55:00' for example. In my old code I was using ceil

[Bogdan]

Nope, Carbon doesn't implement that sort of logic.