PHP DateTime, parsing string date fails - php

Question

im passing a startDate end an endDate as a get request parameter to a method,
here they get parsed like :
$startDate=$request->query->get('start');
$endDate=$request->query->get('end');
$logger->info('startdate is :'.$startDate.', endDate is : '.$endDate.'');
$start=new \DateTime($startDate);
$end=new \DateTime($endDate);
when i log those two parameters, they may be
startdate is: Wed Jan 12 2011 00:00:00 GMT 0100 (CET)
startDate is: Sat Jan 12 2013 00:00:00 GMT 0100 (CET)
so far so good, but if i log the DateTime´s instanciated from the string above it returns
DateTime Object ( [date] => 0100-01-12 00:00:00 [timezone_type] => 2 [timezone] => GMT )
DateTime Object ( [date] => 0100-01-15 00:00:00 [timezone_type] => 2 [timezone] => GMT )
you can see, the DateTime does not represent the same Date
can i make a valid DateTime from those Strings ?
Update :
i tryed to use createFromFormat
like
$startDate=$request->query->get('start');
$endDate=$request->query->get('end');
$start=new \DateTime::createFromFormat('D M d Y h:i:s e+O (T)',$startDate);
$end=new \DateTime::createFromFormat('D M d Y h:i:s e+O (T)',$endDate);
but that causes exception :
FatalErrorException: Parse: syntax error, unexpected 'createFromFormat' (T_STRING), expecting variable (T_VARIABLE) or '$' in
i also tryed :
$start=new \DateTime(\DateTime::createFromFormat('D M d Y h:i:s e+O (T)',$startDate));
$end=new \DateTime(\DateTime::createFromFormat('D M d Y h:i:s e+O (T)',$endDate));
But that creates Dates a new Date from right now ( 2014-01-21 12:28:57 )
I just dont get it right.
for any help, thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Your input datetime string Wed Jan 12 2011 00:00:00 GMT 0100 (CET) is not valid/standard for use in DateTime() or strtotime(). See date_parse() function to see how your datetime string is being parsed:
print_r( date_parse('Wed Jan 12 2011 00:00:00 GMT 0100 (CET)') );
demo
Use DateTime::createFromFormat() static method to return DateTime object according to the specific format.
demo

Answer 2

The date format you are probably using is RFC2822. As shown on the PHP date() page as this:
Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200
You switched the month and day parts and PHP was unable to determine the correct parts.
Best practice would be to either use a Unix-Timestamp (seconds after Epoch) or a better format like ISO 8601 (2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00).