Default Carbon format

@JeroenVanOort call this at startup:

Carbon::setToStringFormat('your format');

But be careful and don't pass carbon object somewhere as a model attribute (eg. in custom mutator) and try to save, because it would be a problem ;)

Thanks. I placed it in bootstrap/app.php as Carbon\Carbon::setToStringFormat('c'); and it does the trick!

This doesn't seem to work anymore. It might have to do with Laravel 5.1, but I can't seem to find out what's going wrong. The call in bootstrap/app.php simply doesn't change anything; it's back to the Laravel defaults.

Any help is very much appreciated!

@JeroenVanOort I was having the same issue. You need to update your Model.

protected $dates = [
        'created_at',
        'updated_at',
        'custom_date_attribute'
    ];

More here: Eloquent: Mutators.

I was able to get a workaround for this by creating a few mutators on an intermediate abstract class (ModelA extends ModelB) called:

abstract class ModelB extends Model 
{
   /**
     * Converts the created_at to Atom-format
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function getCreatedAtAtomAttribute()
    {
        return $this->created_at->toAtomString();
    }

    /**
     * Converts the updated_at to Atom-format
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function getUpdatedAtAtomAttribute()
    {
        return $this->updated_at->toAtomString();
    }
}

This allows you to call $modelA->created_at_atom (or something similar) and maintains the created_at attribute as it works currently.

It's deprecated now! What should we do? I need it for my entire APIs which I'm designing.

@jeroenvanoort Try this might get very helpful.

• app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php

use Illuminate\Support\Carbon;

public function boot()
{
    Carbon::serializeUsing(function ($carbon) {
        return $carbon->format('Y-m-d H:i:s e'); // Customize the format as per your requirements
    });
}

This will set the default date format for Carbon whenever it is serialized, including when your models are converted to JSON in the context of a REST API response.