Question

DateTime::createFromFormat doesn’t appear to be working correctly, does anyone know a reason and/or how to fix it?

Given this code:

var_dump(DateTime::createFromFormat('m', '02')->format('m'));
var_dump(DateTime::createFromFormat('n', '2')->format('n'));

My expected output would be

02
2

However I actually get:

03
3

Example:
http://codepad.viper-7.com/e4hns6

I’ve tested this on a multitude of servers including:

• Win PHP 5.4
• Linux PHP 5.3
• Viper Codepad

Answer 1

From the manual:

“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.”

The following should work as expected:

var_dump(DateTime::createFromFormat('!m', '02')->format('m'));
var_dump(DateTime::createFromFormat('!n', '2')->format('n'));

# result:
string(2) "02"
string(1) "2"