How to Convert DateTime to String in PHP

You can represent an exact date and time in PHP using the built-in DateTime object.

Creating one is simple, just pass it a string in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

The problem is that sometimes you want to go from a DateTime object back to a string.

In this post, we'll learn how to convert a DateTime object to a string in PHP.

How to convert a DateTime object to a string

To start, let's create our own DateTime object.

PHP
$date = new DateTime('2020-01-01 00:00:00');

The easiest way to convert this back to a readable string is to call the format method on it and pass it the format in which you want to get the string in.

PHP
$date = new DateTime('2020-01-01 00:00:00');

$results = $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

echo($results);

BASH
2020-01-01 00:00:00

The useful part about format is that if the format fails because the DateTime object or the format you passed in is invalid, it will return false.

Because of this, you can use this check to ensure the formatting was succesful:

PHP
$date = new DateTime('2020-01-01 00:00:00');

$results = $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

if ($results) {
    echo($results);
} else {
    echo('Formatting failed');
}

BASH
2020-01-01 00:00:00

Conclusion

In this post, we learned how to convert a DateTime object to a string.

Simply call the format method on your DateTime object and pass the method the date format you want your DateTime formatted to.

Thanks for reading and happy coding!

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