What are the best practices for handling date formats and conversions in PHP, especially when dealing with different locales?

Handling date formats and conversions in PHP can be tricky, especially when dealing with different locales. One of the best practices is to use the `DateTime` class along with the `setlocale()` function to set the desired locale for date formatting. This allows you to easily convert dates between different formats and ensure that they are displayed correctly based on the user's locale.

// Set the desired locale for date formatting
setlocale(LC_TIME, 'en_US');

// Create a DateTime object with the input date
$date = new DateTime('2022-01-15');

// Format the date in the desired format
$formatted_date = strftime('%B %d, %Y', $date->getTimestamp());

// Output the formatted date
echo $formatted_date;