in PHP, how to check if the date_create return an valid date object?

Question

date_create('sdfsdfdsfsd') //invalid
date_create('2010-07-30 08:03') //valid

Answer 1

As you can see from the documentation it is simply an alias of DateTime::__construct which:

Returns a new DateTime instance. Procedural style returns FALSE on failure.

Answer 2

Isn't this covered right at the top of the manual page?

<?php
$date = date_create('2000-01-01');
if (!$date) {
    $e = date_get_last_errors();
    foreach ($e['errors'] as $error) {
        echo "$error\n";
    }
    exit(1);
}

echo date_format($date, 'Y-m-d');
?>

Answer 3

If the date_create function doesn't return a valid date object, it'll return FALSE.

A much more complicated alternative is to validate its parameter with Regex according to http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.formats.php.

Answer 4

Or you could validate first:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/141315/php-check-for-a-valid-date-weird-date-conversions/141365#141365