date_reformat function in PHP

Hi guys, I'm Jack Pham. In this article, I'm going to share with you a PHP function which can help you quickly reformat your date value.

Background

date is a type of value in PHP which can be displayed in many formats. To format a date value stored in a variable, we can use the built-in date_format() function. However, the function only works if your first parameter is a DateTime object. It doesn't work if you use a date string.

Of course, you can use date_create() or date_create_from_format() to convert your date string to a DateTime object. However, it may take you a lot of time if you do this usually.

In that case, you use my custom date_reformat() function to quicken your coding progress

Setup

This function is easy to set up when it doesn't need any external libraries or plugins. Below are the codes and usage:

function date_reformat($date_string, $current_format = 'Y-m-d', $new_format = 'm/d/Y'){
    if ($date_string != null && $date_string != '' && date_create_from_format($current_format, $date_string) != false) {
        $date_string = date_format(date_create_from_format($current_format, $date_string), $new_format);
    }
    return $date_string;
}

Usage

Just simply put the function to your code or your helper file, then use it normally:

$date = '2023-02-08';
$date = date_reformat($date);
echo $date; // 02/08/2023

$date = '02/08/2023';
$date = date_reformat($date, 'm/d/Y', 'M d Y');
echo $date; //Feb 08 2023

$date = 'Feb 08 2023';
$date = date_reformat($date, 'M d Y');
echo $date; //02/08/2023

Parameters

There are 3 parameters in the function:

• $date_string (required): Your date string needed to be reformat;
• $current_format (optional): The current format of your date string. Default: Y-m-d.
• $new_format (optional): The new format of your date string. Default: d/m/Y.

Conclusion

I hope this article and the function can help your work. You can tell me if the function works in your code or not by leaving a comment.