PHP | date_create_from_format() Function

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The date_create_from_format() is an inbuilt function in php which is used to parses a time string according to a specified format. This function accepts three parameters and returns new DateTime in success or false on failure.

Syntax:
Procedural style

date_create_from_format ( $format, $time, $timezone )

Object oriented style

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

Parameters: This function accepts 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: Day of the month, 2 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’s 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 is used as string representing the time.
$timezone: This parameter is used as DateTimeZone object representing the desired time zone.

Return Value: This function returns a new DateTime instance on success or FALSE on failure.

Below programs illustrate the date_create_from_format() function in PHP.

Program 1:

<?php 
  
// Declare a date in given format 
$date = date_create_from_format('D-M-Y', 'monday-Feb-2018'); 
  
// Output date in given format 
echo date_format($date, 'y-n-j'); 
?> 

Output:

18-2-5

Program 2:

<?php 
  
// Declare a date in given format 
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('D-M-Y', 'monday-Feb-2018'); 
  
// Output date in given format 
echo $date->format('Y-m-d'); 
?> 