Laravel 5 How to submit dates to SQL database - php

Question

I've been stuck for days, I can't get my dates to save to my database and having issue after issue. Can someone recommend a video/article or just plain explain on how to fully deal with dates?
Migration
$table->dateTime('start_date');
$table->dateTime('end_date');
Controller
public function store(Request $request)
{
$this->validate(request(), [
'name' => 'required',
'description' => 'required',
'status' => 'required',
'startdate' => 'required',
'enddate' => 'required'
]);
Event::create(request(['name', 'description', 'status', 'start_date', 'end_date']));
return redirect('/events');
}
Model
THIS IS OBVIOUSLY THE ISSUE and I would paste things but theres multiple things I've put here and nothing works.
This is the dd of the request
+request: ParameterBag {#40 ▼
#parameters: array:6 [▼
"_token" => "yjU5A0Z5dpRES7KWK82fRMbHMRQkaooe27vYKlo7"
"name" => "My first event"
"status" => "Inquery"
"description" => "this is my desc"
"start_date" => "02/16/2017 6:36 PM"
"end_date" => "02/24/2017 6:37 PM"
]

Answer 1

You need to provide the dates to the database (via laravel) in a format that it understands.
You're using the d/m/Y H:i A format on the front end (see the PHP Date page for more on date formats). The database likes to receive dates in the format Y-m-d H:i:s. Even better, laravel can insert Carbon date objects into the database with no formatting on your part.
As Carbon comes with Laravel, you can use it to change your date string into a Carbon object.
$start_date = \Carbon\Carbon::createFromFormat('d/m/Y H:i A', $request->input('start_date'));
As you can see, Carbon takes the date string and as the format has been supplied, it's easy for it to create a new Carbon object. This can be directly inserted into the database.
If you really wanted, you could explicitly cast it into a string with $start_date->toDateTimeFormat();, or even $start_date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');.
// put the first three elements in the insertData array
$insertData = request()->only(['name', 'description', 'status']);
$insertData['start_date'] = \Carbon\Carbon::createFromFormat('d/m/Y H:i A', $request->input('start_date'));
$insertData['end_date'] = \Carbon\Carbon::createFromFormat('d/m/Y H:i A', $request->input('end_date'));
// both dates are now carbon objects, not strings
Event::create($insertData);