Date and Time in Laravel with Carbon Facade

Carbon is a PHP extension that provides a simple and elegant way to work with dates and times in Laravel. With Carbon, developers can easily manipulate, format, and compare date and time objects. In this article, we will explore all the methods provided by Carbon in Laravel in detail. Laravel has Carbon built-in, so you don’t need to install it separately.

To use Carbon in your Laravel project, you just need to import it with the use statement:

use Carbon\Carbon;

Creating a Carbon instance

You can create a new Carbon instance by calling the Carbon::now() method. This method returns a new instance representing the current date and time:

$now = Carbon::now();

You can also create a Carbon instance for a specific date and time:

$date = Carbon::create(2022, 10, 31, 23, 59, 59);

Converting a Carbon instance to a string

Carbon provides a convenient way to convert a date object into a string representation. The format method allows you to specify the format you want to use for the output.

$date = Carbon::now();echo $date->format('Y-m-d'); // 2023-03-06

Carbon provides a few predefined formats, such as toDateString(), toTimeString(), and toDateTimeString():

$date = Carbon::now();echo $date->toDateString(); // 2023-03-06echo $date->toTimeString(); // 14:05:23echo $date->toDateTimeString(); // 2023-03-06 14:05:23

Converting a string to a Carbon instance

If you have a date string that you want to convert to a Carbon date object, you can use the parse method.

$dateString = '2023-03-06';$date = Carbon::parse($dateString);

Carbon can also parse dates in various formats, such as ISO-8601, RFC-2822, and UNIX timestamps:

$dateString = '2022-10-31T23:59:59Z';$date = Carbon::parse($dateString);echo $date->toDateTimeString(); // 2022-10-31 23:59:59

Working with timezones

Carbon allows you to easily change the timezone of a date object. You can use the tz method to set the timezone.

$date = Carbon::now();$date->tz = 'Asia/Kolkata';

You can also create a new Carbon instance with a specific timezone:

$date = Carbon::now('Asia/Kolkata');

Carbon can automatically adjust the timezone of a date object based on the user’s timezone:

$date = Carbon::now();echo $date->tzName; // America/New_Yorkecho $date->tzOffset; // -18000

Manipulating dates

Carbon provides several methods to manipulate date objects. You can add or subtract days, months, years, hours, minutes, or seconds from a date object.

$date = Carbon::now();$date->year = 2022;$date->month = 10;$date->day = 31;

You can also set the time of a date object:

$date = Carbon::now();$date->hour = 23;$date->minute = 59;$date->second = 59;

Comparing dates

Carbon provides methods to compare date objects. You can check if a date is before or after another date.

$date1 = new Carbon('2023-03-06');$date2 = new Carbon('2023-03-07');$date1->lt($date2); // true$date1->gt($date2); // false

Carbon also provides other comparison methods, such as eq, ne, lte, and gte.

You can also compare the difference between two dates:

$date1 = new Carbon('2023-03-06');$date2 = new Carbon('2023-03-07');$diff = $date1->diffInDays($date2); // 1

Carbon provides other diff methods, such as diffInSeconds, diffInMinutes, diffInHours, diffInMonths, and diffInYears.

Formatting dates

Carbon provides several formatting options to display date objects in a human-readable format. Some commonly used formats are:

$date = new Carbon('2023-03-06');echo $date->isoFormat('dddd, MMMM Do YYYY'); // Sunday, March 6th 2023echo $date->diffForHumans(); // 2 days from now

Carbon provides many other formatting options, such as shortRelativeDiffForHumans, longRelativeDiffForHumans, shortEnglishMonth, and shortFrenchDay.

Working with periods

Carbon provides a diff method that returns a DateInterval object representing the difference between two dates. You can use the DateInterval object to perform further operations, such as calculating the total number of days, hours, or minutes.

$date1 = new Carbon('2023-03-06');$date2 = new Carbon('2023-03-08');$diff = $date1->diff($date2);echo $diff->days; // 2echo $diff->h; // 0echo $diff->i; // 0

Carbon also provides a duration method that returns a DateInterval object representing a period of time, such as 2 hours and 30 minutes.

$duration = CarbonInterval::hours(2)->minutes(30);echo $duration->h; // 2echo $duration->i; // 30

You can add or subtract a duration from a date object:

$date = new Carbon('2023-03-06');$duration = CarbonInterval::days(7);$date->add($duration);

Conclusion

Carbon is a powerful library that provides many methods for working with dates and times in Laravel. Whether you need to manipulate dates, format them, compare them, or work with periods of time, Carbon provides a wide range of methods to make your life easier. By using the methods discussed in this article, you can work with dates and times in Laravel more efficiently and effectively.