Are there any recommended best practices for handling date and time conversions in PHP applications?

When working with date and time conversions in PHP applications, it is recommended to use the DateTime class which provides a more robust and reliable way to manipulate dates and times. This class allows for easy conversion between different date formats, timezones, and calculations.

// Example of converting a date to a different timezone
$date = '2022-01-01 12:00:00';
$originalTimezone = new DateTimeZone('UTC');
$newTimezone = new DateTimeZone('America/New_York');

$dateTime = new DateTime($date, $originalTimezone);
$dateTime->setTimezone($newTimezone);

echo $dateTime->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');