Localized date formatting in Laravel

Now I will give a very simple way of how to do localized date formatting in the Laravel framework in a project. In the end, we get the result, in which getting the property of the model, for example, created_at (timestamp format: 2015-10-20 19:45:56) - is converted to "October 20 at 19:45". Formatting can be customized to taste or based on needs.

Creating a file with translations

Create date.php in the app / lang / ru directory (if the current language is Russian). Its content will be the format of the date output with time and the correct end for months.

<?php return [ 'later' => ':date  :time', 'today' => '  :time', 'yesterday' => '  :time', 'month_declensions' => [ 'January' => '', 'February' => '', 'March' => '', 'April' => '', 'May' => '', 'June' => '', 'July' => '', 'August' => '', 'September' => '', 'October' => '', 'November' => '', 'December' => '' ] ]; 

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Creating a library

Now we are implementing a library that will execute all of our logic for date conversion.
Create the app / libraries folder (if you don’t have one) and the DateFormat.php file in the Date folder, the full path will be app / libraries / Date / DateFormat.php.

 <?php namespace Date; class DateFormat { /** *      ( ) */ public static function post($time) { $timestamp = strtotime($time); $published = date('dmY', $timestamp); if ($published === date('dmY')) { return trans('date.today', ['time' => date('H:i', $timestamp)]); } elseif ($published === date('dmY', strtotime('-1 day'))) { return trans('date.yesterday', ['time' => date('H:i', $timestamp)]); } else { $formatted = trans('date.later', [ 'time' => date('H:i', $timestamp), 'date' => date('d F' . (date('Y', $timestamp) === date('Y') ? null : ' Y'), $timestamp) ]); return strtr($formatted, trans('date.month_declensions')); } } } 

Autoload libraries

In order for all libraries to be available for use, we add autoloading classes from our app / libraries directory to composer.json:

 { "autoload": { "classmap": [ "app/libraries" ] } } 

And update the composer'a cache:

 composer dump-autoload 

Basic model

Here you can do in several ways:

• Create an abstract base model and inherit from it;
• Create a type (trait) and add its use to our models.

I chose the first method, since it seemed more practical.

In the created app / models / Model.php file, we add a method that will be called when the created_at property is received.
It will be called automatically, we do not need to do this.

 <?php use Date\DateFormat; use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model as Eloquent; abstract class Model extends Eloquent { public function getCreatedAtAttribute($attr) { return DateFormat::post($attr); } } 

This code speaks for itself: when getting the model property created_at (the attribute name is converted to camelCase), return the value processed by the post method using our DateFormat library. You can also create methods for the updated_at, deleted_at, and other attributes.

Now you can check everything in practice, below is an example of a model and controller for all posts.

Model app / models / Post.php:

 <?php class Post extends Model { /** * @var string The table associated with the model. */ protected $table = 'posts'; } 

App / controllers / PostController.php controller

 <?php class PostController extends Controller { public function index() { return Post::all(); } } 

Let us turn to our controller (do not forget to prescribe the routing conditions) and get the output array of our posts in json-format, where the created_at property will be formatted in the required language and format.

You can implement such functionality using ServiceProvider, which will be an even easier way. But this method is clearer.

I would be glad to hear comments on the code. I would like to know what are the best practices for solving such problems.