What are some best practices for handling date calculations in PHP?

When handling date calculations in PHP, it is important to use the DateTime class for accurate and reliable date manipulation. This class provides a wide range of methods for adding or subtracting days, months, years, hours, minutes, and seconds to a given date. Additionally, it is recommended to set the timezone explicitly to avoid any unexpected behavior due to server settings.

// Create a DateTime object with the current date
$date = new DateTime();

// Add 1 day to the current date
$date->add(new DateInterval('P1D'));

// Set the timezone to 'America/New_York'
$date->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('America/New_York'));

// Output the new date
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');