DateTime

DateTime()
DateTime(string $format)

Validates whether an input is a date/time or not.

The $format argument should be in accordance to DateTime::format(). See more in the Formats section.

When a $format is not given its default value is Y-m-d H:i:s.

v::dateTime()->validate('2009-01-01'); // true

Also accepts strtotime() values:

v::dateTime()->validate('now'); // true

And DateTimeInterface instances:

v::dateTime()->validate(new DateTime()); // true
v::dateTime()->validate(new DateTimeImmutable()); // true

You can pass a format when validating strings:

v::dateTime('Y-m-d')->validate('01-01-2009'); // false

Format has no effect when validating DateTime instances.

Message template for this validator includes {{sample}}.

Formats

Note that this rule validates whether the input matches a given DateTime::format() format and NOT if the input can be parsed with a given DateTimeImmutable::createFromFormat() format. That makes the validation stricter but offers some limitations.

The way DateTimeImmutable::createFromFormat() parses an input allows for many different conversions. Overall DateTimeImmutable::createFromFormat() tend to be more lenient than DateTime::format(). This might be what you desire, and you may want to use Callback to create a custom validation.

$input = '2014-04-12T23:20:50.052Z';

v::callback(fn($input) => is_string($input) && DateTime::createFromFormat(DateTime::RFC3339_EXTENDED, $input))
    ->validate($input); // true

v::dateTime(DateTime::RFC3339_EXTENDED)->validate($input); // false

Categorization

Date and Time

Changelog

Version	Description
2.3.0	Validation became a lot stricter
2.2.4	`v::dateTime('z')` is no longer supported.
2.0.0	Created