Pre-requisites:
You have to complete the following tasks before practicing the examples of this tutorial.
Create a new Laravel project named timeProject. Here, the composer has been used to create the Laravel project. If the composer is not installed before then, you must install it before executing the following command.
Go to the project folder.
All examples of this tutorial have been tested in Laravel version 9+. Check the installed version of Laravel.
Create a controller:
Run the following command to create a controller to check the uses of the Carbon package. After executing the command, the datetimeController.php file will be created inside the app/Http/Controllers folder.
Different uses of Carbon:
The uses of Carbon for different purposes have been shown in this part of the tutorial by modifying the datetimeController.php file.
Example-1: Read the current date and time
The simplest use of the Carbon class is to read the current date and time. Open the datetimeController.php file and replace the content with the following script. The now() function of the Carbon class has been used in the script to read the current date and time.
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Carbon\Carbon;
class datetimeController extends Controller
{
public function index()
{
//Read the current date and time
$current_datetime = Carbon::now();
//Print the current date and time
echo "The current date and time is $current_datetime";
}
}
Open the web.php file from the routes folder, add the following lines to add the controller information, and run the index() function of the controller for the root URL.
Route::get('/',[datetimeController::class, 'index']);
Run the following command to start the Laravel development server if it is not started before.
Run the following URL from the browser check the output of this example.
The following similar output will appear based on the date and time of the system.
Example-2: Format the current date and time
Replace the index() function of the datetimeController with the following script to know how to format the current date and time. Three different types of formatting have been shown in the following script. The date value will be printed with the dd-mm-yy format in the first output. The date value will be printed with the full month name and year value in the second output. The time value will be printed with the hh:mm:ss format in the third output.
{
//Read the current date and time
$datetime = Carbon::now()->toDateTimeString();
//Format the date to get the date only
$cur_date = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $datetime)->format('d-m-y');
//Print the current date
echo "The current date is $cur_date<br />";
//Format the date to get the date in another way
$cur_date2 = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $datetime)->format('d F Y');
//Print the current date
echo "The current date in another format is $cur_date2<br />";
//Format the date to get the time only
$cur_time = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $datetime)->format('h:i:s');
//Print the current time
echo "The current time is $cur_time";
}
The following similar output will appear based on the current date and time after executing the above script.
Example-3: Print the current, previous, and next date
Replace the index() function of the datetimeController with the following script to know how to print the current date, coming date, previous date.
{
$now = Carbon::now()->toDateString();
$formmatted = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $now)->format('F j, Y');
echo "<b>Today:</b> $formmatted<br />";
$nextDay = Carbon::tomorrow()->toDateString();
$formmatted = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $nextDay)->format('F j, Y');
echo "<b>Tomorrow:</b> $formmatted<br />";
$prevDay = Carbon::yesterday()->toDateString();
$formmatted = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $prevDay)->format('F j, Y');
echo "<b>Yesterday:</b> $formmatted<br />";
}
The following similar output will appear based on the current date and time after executing the above script.
Example-4: Find the difference between dates in days, months, and years
Replace the index() function of the datetimeController with the following script to know the way of calculating the difference between two dates in days, months, and years.
{
//Set the start date
$start_date = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', '2022-03-15');
//Set the end date
$end_date = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', '2024-03-15');
//Count the difference in days
$count_days = $start_date->diffInDays($end_date);
//Print the count value
echo "The difference between two dates is $count_days days<br />";
//Count the difference in months
$count_months = $start_date->diffInMonths($end_date);
//Print the count value
echo "The difference between two dates is $count_months months<br />";
//Count the difference in years
$count_years = $start_date->diffInYears($end_date);
//Print the count value
echo "The difference between two dates is $count_years years";
}
The following output will appear after executing the above script.
Example-5: Set the default timezone
Another important use of the Carbon class is to set the timezone. Replace the index() function of the datetimeController with the following script to set two different timezones and check the time differences between the timezones.
{
//Set the default timezone
date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');
$datetime = Carbon::now()->toDateTimeString();
$date = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s',$datetime)->format('d/m/Y h:i:s');
echo $date,"<br />";
//Change the default timezone
date_default_timezone_set('Asia/Dhaka');
$datetime = Carbon::now()->toDateTimeString();
$date = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s',$datetime)->format('d/m/Y h:i:s');
echo $date;
}
The following similar output will appear based on the current date and time after executing the above script.
Conclusion:
The Carbon class is a very useful class of the Laravel to work with the date and time. Different methods of this class have been used in the examples of this tutorial to print date and time in different ways and perform date and time-related tasks.
