Carbon (laravel) deal with invalid date - php

Question

I have a quite simple problem.. I use the Carbon::parse($date) function with $date = '15.15.2015'. Of course it can not return a valid string because there is no 15th month. But how can i "ignore" the error message?
Great would be something like
if (Carbon::parse($date) != error) Carbon::parse($date);
else echo 'invalid date, enduser understands the error message';

Answer 1

You can catch the exception raised by Carbon like this:
try {
Carbon::parse($date);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
echo 'invalid date, enduser understands the error message';
}
Later edit: Starting with Carbon version 2.34.0, which was released on May 13, 2020, a new type of exception is being thrown: Carbon\Exceptions\InvalidFormatException
So if you're using a newer version of Carbon, you can actually do this more elegantly
try {
Carbon::parse($date);
} catch (\Carbon\Exceptions\InvalidFormatException $e) {
echo 'invalid date, enduser understands the error message';
}
Thank you Christhofer Natalius for pointing this out!

Answer 2

Pass Laravel's validation before use it. Create a validator like this:
protected function validator(array $data)
{
//$data would be an associative array like ['date_value' => '15.15.2015']
$message = [
'date_value.date' => 'invalid date, enduser understands the error message'
];
return Validator::make($data, [
'date_value' => 'date',
],$message);
}
And call him right before use your date:
$this->validator(['date_value' => $date])->validate();
// $this->validator(request()->all())->validate(); you can pass the whole request if fields names are the same
Carbon::parse($date);
You can add all your desired fields to validator and apply multiple validations handling every message or using the default message. This would be the way if you are validating User's input

Answer 3

Try this
$birth_date = Carbon::createFromFormat('dmy', $birth_date_mark)->startOfDay();
if ($birth_date->format('dmy') !== $birth_date_mark) {
throw new OperationException(trans('exception.invalid_birth_date'));
}

Answer 4

another solution would be to handle the exception globally.
in app/Exceptions/Handler.php
use Carbon\Exceptions\InvalidFormatException;
then in the render method check if an exception is thrown by Carbon
if ($exception instanceof InvalidFormatException) {
return response()->json([
'status' => 'fail',
'data' => [
'message' => 'Invalid date formate!'
]
], 400);
}

Answer 5

Both try...catch... and validator is good. Sam's answer is good too.
In Laravel 8, I use following code:
// app/Exceptions/Handler.php
use Carbon\Exceptions\InvalidFormatException;
public function register()
{
$this->renderable(function (InvalidFormatException $e, $request) {
return response()->json([
'message' => 'Invalid date format!.'
], 400);
});
}
When InvalidFormatException thrown, Laravel will return http status 400 and json with message.
If you don't want to use try...catch... at every Carbon::parse() section, this is a good way to handle exception.