What best practices should be followed when handling date formatting and manipulation in PHP scripts to avoid unexpected output like the date "01.01.1970"?

When handling date formatting and manipulation in PHP scripts, it is important to ensure that the input date format matches the expected format. This can help avoid unexpected output like the date "01.01.1970", which is commonly seen when using incorrect date formats. To avoid this issue, always specify the correct date format when parsing or formatting dates in PHP. 

// Example of correct date formatting and manipulation in PHP
$dateString = '2022-09-15'; // Input date string in the correct format
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $dateString); // Create a DateTime object from the input date string
$formattedDate = $date->format('d/m/Y'); // Format the date as 'dd/mm/YYYY'
echo $formattedDate; // Output the correctly formatted date

Keywords

date formatting date manipulation PHP scripts unexpected output strtotime function

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