Managing date formats is crucial in any Laravel application to ensure consistency across your project. In Laravel 11, changing the date format globally helps maintain a uniform display of dates.

This guide will show you how to change the date format in your entire Laravel 11 project using simple and efficient methods.

How to Change Date Format in All Laravel 11 Project

The main challenge with date formatting in a Laravel project is managing it across three different areas:

• Database: The date format should always be YYYY-MM-DD for consistency and compatibility.
• Laravel Back-end: In forms and views, dates should be displayed in the client’s preferred format, but converted to YYYY-MM-DD when saving to the database.
• JavaScript Datepicker: JavaScript uses a different date format syntax compared to PHP, requiring format adjustments when integrating date pickers.

 

In this example article, we will use Bootstrap Datepicker as an example.

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/bootstrap-datetimepicker/4.17.47/js/bootstrap-datetimepicker.min.js"></script>

<script>
$(document).ready(function () {
  $('.date').datetimepicker({
    format: 'MM/DD/YYYY',
    locale: 'en'
  });
</script>

As you can see, we’re using the format MM/DD/YYYY, which corresponds to m/d/Y in PHP date formats.

 

When we submit the form data to a controller, the date is received exactly as entered in the datepicker. If we try to save it directly in the m/d/Y format, it will cause an SQL error because the database expects the YYYY-MM-DD format.

To prevent this, we need to convert the date into the correct format. There are several ways to handle this conversion.

Method 1. TransactionController store() method

public function store(Request $request)
{
    $data = $request->all();
    $data['due_date'] = Carbon::createFromFormat('m/d/Y', $request->due_date)->format('Y-m-d');
    $transaction = Transaction::create($data);
}

 

Method 2. Model Mutator app/Transaction.php

public function setTransactionDateAttribute($value)
{
    $this->attributes['due_date'] = Carbon::createFromFormat('m/d/Y', $value)->format('Y-m-d');
}

 

We saved the date in the Y-m-d format in the database for consistency and compatibility. However, for users, the date should always be displayed visually in the m/d/Y format for better readability and usability.

app/Transaction.php

public function getTransactionDateAttribute($value)
{
    return Carbon::parse($value)->format('m/d/Y');
}

 

We should replace the hardcoded date formats with values from the configuration file for all the examples mentioned above. This approach makes the application more maintainable and flexible, allowing changes in one central location instead of updating formats across multiple files.

add these variables to config/app.php

return [
  'date_format' => 'm/d/Y',
  'date_format_javascript' => 'MM/DD/YYYY',
];

In Laravel, we can use this:

Carbon::createFromFormat(config('app.date_format'), $value)->format('Y-m-d');
Carbon::parse($value)->format(config('app.date_format'));

We can’t directly insert a PHP variable inside a JavaScript file. However, we can place the JavaScript code within a Blade file, allowing us to embed PHP variables like this:

$('.date').datetimepicker({
    format: '{{ config('app.date_format_javascript') }}',
    locale: 'en'
});

 

---

You might also like:

• Read Also: Building a Chat Application with Laravel Livewire
• Read Also: Date Range Calendar in Flatpickr Example
• Read Also: How to Disable Past Dates in Bootstrap 5 Datepicker
• Read Also: Laravel 10 Datatable Date Range Filter using AJAX