Convert String to Carbon

Question

I am using Laravel 5.1

Few days ago I used protected $dates = ['license_expire'] in my model to convert the string date to Carbon instances. In HTML the default value in create form for the date was Carbon\Carbon::now()->format('Y-m-d')

In order to show alert in home page i used <p>Licence Expired: <b>{{ $employee->license_expire < Carbon\Carbon::now()?'License has expired':$employee->license_expire->diffForHumans() }}</b></p>

Till then diffForHumans() method works fine.

But in that case the edit form's default value also was today's date no matter what was in database(I am using a partial form). To resolve it I change the default value in HTML was NUll. And add another method in my model to show current date in create form.

public function getLicenseExpireAttribute($date)
{
    return Carbon::parse($date)->format('Y-m-d');
}

After that when i go to home page i have an FatalErrorException which says Call to a member function diffForHumans() on string

When I check the date with dd($employee->license_expire) it become STRING again.

Can anybody tell me how can I convert the string to Carbon in this situation?

or

Make my create form's default date as today's date, the edit form's date from database and I can use diffForHumans() to show alert in home page?

Answer 1

You were almost there.

Remove protected $dates = ['license_expire']

and then change your LicenseExpire accessor to:

public function getLicenseExpireAttribute($date)
{
    return Carbon::parse($date);
}

This way it will return a Carbon instance no matter what. So for your form you would just have $employee->license_expire->format('Y-m-d') (or whatever format is required) and diffForHumans() should work on your home page as well.

---

If you're using Laravel 9+, you can alternatively use the updated syntax for defining Accessors :

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Casts\Attribute;

public function licenseExpire(): Attribute 
{
    return Attribute::make(
        get: fn ($value) => Carbon::parse($value);
    );
}