DateInterval doesn't accept ISO 8601 timeperiod with milliseconds

Question

I have this ISO 8601 time period string: P0Y0M0DT3H5M0.000S and PHP7.4 fails to construct a DateInterval with it.

<?php
$d = new \DateInterval('P0Y0M0DT3H5M0.000S');
var_dump($d);

Fatal error: Uncaught Exception: DateInterval::__construct(): Unknown or bad format (P0Y0M0DT3H5M1.33S) in [...][...]:2

It fails for the milliseconds. When I omit the milliseconds -P0Y0M0DT3H5M0S- it works fine.

With milliseconds it should be a valid ISO 8601 string afaik.
According to Wikipedia this is the format:

[Start]P[JY][MM][WW][TD][T[hH][mM][s[.f]S]]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Zeitspannen

Why doesnt PHP accept this format and how can I work around this?

Answer 1

You can use DateInterval::createFromDateString.

$d = DateInterval::createFromDateString('3 Hours 5 Minutes 500000 microseconds');

echo $d->format('%h Hours %m Minutes %s.%F Seconds');
//3 Hours 0 Minutes 0.500000 Seconds

The following function can be used as a workaround if an expression like P0Y0M0DT3H5M7.520S is specified.

function createDateInterval($interval_spec){
  $f = 0.0;
  if(preg_match('~\.\d+~',$interval_spec,$match)){
    $interval_spec = str_replace($match[0], "", $interval_spec);
    $f = (float)$match[0];
  }
  $di = new \Dateinterval($interval_spec);
  $di->f= $f;
  return $di;
}

$d = createDateInterval('P0Y0M0DT3H5M7.520S');
echo '<pre>';
var_export($d);

Result:

DateInterval::__set_state(array(
   'y' => 0,
   'm' => 0,
   'd' => 0,
   'h' => 3,
   'i' => 5,
   's' => 7,
   'f' => 0.52,
   'weekday' => 0,
   'weekday_behavior' => 0,
   'first_last_day_of' => 0,
   'invert' => 0,
   'days' => false,
   'special_type' => 0,
   'special_amount' => 0,
   'have_weekday_relative' => 0,
   'have_special_relative' => 0,
))