Question

One of my fields in one of my entities is a “datetime” variable.

How can I convert this field into a string to render in a browser?

Here is a code snippet:

{% for game in games %}
    ...
        <td> {{game.gameTeamIdOne.teamName}} </td>
        <td> {{game.gameTeamIdTwo.teamName}} </td>
        <td> {{game.gameDate}}</td>
    </tr>
{% endfor %}

Here is the variable in my entity class:

/**
 * @var date $gameDate
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="GAME_DATE", type="datetime", nullable=true)
 */
private $gameDate;

And here is the error message I am getting:

An exception has been thrown during the rendering of a template (“Catchable Fatal Error: Object of class DateTime could not be converted to string in …\app\cache\dev\twig\9b\ad\58fd3bb1517632badf1fdc7fa4a8.php line 33”) in “BeerBundle:Games:gameTable.html.twig” at line 10.

Answer 1

Although you can use the

{{ game.gameDate|date('Y-m-d') }}

approach, keep in mind that this version does not honor the user locale, which should not be a problem with a site used by only users of one nationality. International users should display the game date totally different, like extending the \DateTime class, and adding a __toString() method to it that checks the locale and acts accordingly.

Edit:

As pointed out by @Nic in a comment, if you use the Intl extension of Twig, you will have a localizeddate filter available, which shows the date in the user’s locale. This way you can drop my previous idea of extending \DateTime.