Extend on a Carbon date instance?

Hello all-

In my app, I'm frequently writing:

$model->created_at->formatLocalized(Config::get('local.dateFormat'))

$model->updated_at->formatLocalized(Config::get('local.dateFormat') . ' %H:%M:%S')

On all sorts of dates. The idea is to be able to configure several date formats into one config file to change throughout the system.

Is there a way to extend the Carbon instance so that I could do something like:

$model->created_at->formatted();

$model->updated_at->formattedWithTime();

Instead?

Thanks,

Matt

Level 47

Few ways. Helper class or attributes in a model.

Level 53

@Elodis No, you can't extend Carbon, since it doesn't let you do so.

But you can do this in your models using mutators and accessors.

Level 38

Use presenters! Search laracast - there is a package created also.

Level 1

Well I thought presenters would work, but that's on a model by model basis.

Is there a way I can set a presenter on any Carbon date defined by any getDates()

Level 10

I've been working on a class to do exactly that. It's the FormattedCarbon object at https://github.com/kumuwai/date-range.

You can output a formatted string by doing things like this:

$this->created_at->short
$this->created_at->time
$this->created_at->style("something")

If you want it to apply globally, extend your models from a BaseModel class (which extends Eloquent), and override the asDateTime() method.

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