How to format an UTC date to use the Z (Zulu) zone designator in php?
PhpDatetimeIso8601Php Problem Overview
I need to display and handle UTC dates in the following format:
> 2013-06-28T22:15:00Z
As this format is part of the ISO8601 standard I have no trouble creating DateTime objects from strings like the one above. However I can't find a clean way (meaning no string manipulations like substr and replace, etc.) to present my DateTime object in the desired format. I tried to tweak the server and php datetime settings, with little success. I always get:
$date->format(DateTime::ISO8601); // gives 2013-06-28T22:15:00+00:00
Is there any date format or configuration setting that will give me the desired string? Or I'll have to append the 'Z' manually to a custom time format?
Php Solutions
Solution 1 - Php
No, there is no special constant for the desired format. I would use:
$date->format('Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z');
But you will have to make sure that the times you are using are really UTC to avoid interpretation errors in your application.
Solution 2 - Php
If you are using Carbon then the method is:
echo $dt->toIso8601ZuluString();
// 2019-02-01T03:45:27Z
Solution 3 - Php
In order to get the UTC date in the desired format, you can use something like this:
gmdate('Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z', $date->format('U'));
Solution 4 - Php
In PHP 8 the format character p was added:
$timestamp = new DateTimeImmutable('2013-06-28T22:15:00Z');
echo $timestamp->format('Y-m-d\TH:i:sp');
// 2013-06-28T22:15:00Z
Solution 5 - Php
To do this with the object-oriented style date object you need to first set the timezone to UTC, and then output the date:
function dateTo8601Zulu(\DateTimeInterface $date):string {
return (clone $date)
->setTimezone(new \DateTimeZone('UTC'))
->format('Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z');
}
Edit: clone object before changing timezone.