What are the best practices for formatting datetime values in PHP to avoid the default output of "01.01.1970"?

When working with datetime values in PHP, it is important to properly format the output to avoid the default value of "01.01.1970" which is displayed when a datetime value is not correctly formatted. To avoid this issue, you can use the date() function in PHP to format the datetime value according to your desired format.

// Example of formatting a datetime value in PHP to avoid default output of "01.01.1970"
$datetime = "2022-05-15 14:30:00"; // Example datetime value
$formatted_datetime = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime($datetime)); // Format datetime value
echo $formatted_datetime; // Output formatted datetime value