Formatting a Carbon date instance

Question

I have an array that returns the following date time:

$item['created_at'] => "2015-10-28 19:18:44" 

How do I change the date to M d Y format in Laravel using Carbon?

Currently it returns with an error

$suborder['payment_date'] = $item['created_at']->format('M d Y'); 

Answer 1

First parse the created_at field as Carbon object.

$createdAt = Carbon::parse($item['created_at']); 

Then you can use

$suborder['payment_date'] = $createdAt->format('M d Y'); 

Answer 2

Date Casting for Laravel 6.x and 7.x

/** * The attributes that should be cast. * * @var array */ protected $casts = [    'created_at' => 'datetime:Y-m-d',    'updated_at' => 'datetime:Y-m-d',    'deleted_at' => 'datetime:Y-m-d h:i:s' ]; 

It easy for Laravel 5 in your Model add property protected $dates = ['created_at', 'cached_at']. See detail here https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/eloquent-mutators#date-mutators

Date Mutators: Laravel 5.x

namespace App;  use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;  class User extends Model {    /**    * The attributes that should be mutated to dates.    *    * @var array    */    protected $dates = ['created_at', 'updated_at', 'deleted_at']; } 

You can format date like this $user->created_at->format('M d Y'); or any format that support by PHP.