DateTime

DateTime

Validates that a value is a valid “datetime”, meaning a string (or an object that can be cast into a string) that follows a specific format.

Basic Usage

• Annotations

  // src/Entity/Author.php
  namespace App\Entity;
  use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
  class Author
  {
      /**
       * @Assert\DateTime
       * @var string A "Y-m-d H:i:s" formatted value
       */
      protected $createdAt;
  }

• YAML

  # config/validator/validation.yaml
  App\Entity\Author:
      properties:
          createdAt:
              - DateTime: ~

• XML

  <!-- config/validator/validation.xml -->
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
  <constraint-mapping xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping https://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping/constraint-mapping-1.0.xsd">
      <class name="App\Entity\Author">
          <property name="createdAt">
              <constraint name="DateTime"/>
          </property>
      </class>
  </constraint-mapping>

• PHP

  // src/Entity/Author.php
  namespace App\Entity;
  use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
  use Symfony\Component\Validator\Mapping\ClassMetadata;
  class Author
  {
     /**
      * @var string A "Y-m-d H:i:s" formatted value
      */
      protected $createdAt;
      public static function loadValidatorMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata)
      {
          $metadata->addPropertyConstraint('createdAt', new Assert\DateTime());
      }
  }

Note

As with most of the other constraints, null and empty strings are considered valid values. This is to allow them to be optional values. If the value is mandatory, a common solution is to combine this constraint with NotBlank.

Options

format

type: string default: Y-m-d H:i:s

This option allows to validate a custom date format. See [DateTime::createFromFormat()](https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.createfromformat.php "DateTime") for formatting options.

groups

type: array | string

It defines the validation group or groups this constraint belongs to. Read more about validation groups.

message

type: string default: This value is not a valid datetime.

This message is shown if the underlying data is not a valid datetime.

You can use the following parameters in this message:

payload

type: mixed default: null

This option can be used to attach arbitrary domain-specific data to a constraint. The configured payload is not used by the Validator component, but its processing is completely up to you.

For example, you may want to use several error levels to present failed constraints differently in the front-end depending on the severity of the error.

This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.