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PHP Manual

# DateTime::createFromFormat

# date_create_from_format

(PHP 5 >= 5.3.0)

DateTime::createFromFormat -- date_create_from_format — Returns new DateTime object formatted according to the specified format

### Description

Object oriented style

public static DateTime DateTime::createFromFormat ( string `$format` , string `$time` [, DateTimeZone `$timezone` ] )

Procedural style

DateTime date_create_from_format ( string `$format` , string `$time` [, DateTimeZone `$timezone` ] )

Returns new DateTime object formatted according to the specified 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 | Examples: 99 or 03
  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
  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 characracters 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 timzone 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 timzone 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().

  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.

`time`

  String representing the time.

`timezone`

  A DateTimeZone object representing the desired time zone.

  If `timezone` is omitted and `time` contains no timezone, the current timezone will be used.

  > Note:

  > The `timezone` parameter and the current timezone are ignored when the `time` 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.

### 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

### See Also

- DateTime::__construct() - Returns new DateTime object
- DateTime::getLastErrors() - Returns the warnings and errors
- checkdate() - Validate a Gregorian date
- strptime() - Parse a time/date generated with strftime

DateTime::__construct
DateTime::getLastErrors
DateTime
PHP Manual