Laravel 12 How to Change Date Format Example

In this laravel tutorial titled “laravel 12 how to change date format example”, you’ll learn different ways to change date format in Laravel 12 using Carbon, Blade, Eloquent model accessors.

Working with dates is a common task in any web application. By default, Laravel stores dates in the database as Y-m-d H:i:s format (for example: 2025-08-18 10:35:20). While this format is good for storage, it’s not always user-friendly when displayed in the UI. Laravel uses the Carbon library for handling date and time. Carbon provides different methods by using those methods we can format date according to our requirement. This makes it super easy to display dates in formats like Y-m-d, d/m/Y, M d, Y, or even human-readable formats such as “2 hours ago.”. For More detail tutorial you will visit laravel official documentation.

Laravel uses Carbon for date handling. Carbon provides different methods, and by using those methods, we can format dates according to our requirement — whether it’s for a database query, Blade view, or API response.

What is Carbon in Laravel?

In Laravel, Carbon is a robust PHP library built on DateTime that simplifies handling dates and times.

Laravel uses Carbon by default whenever you deal with date and time fields, especially in Eloquent models (like created_at and updated_at). You can use Carbon’s Carbon::parse() or Carbon::createFromFormat() methods to format dates.

The Carbon::createFromFormat() and Carbon::parse() methods in the Carbon library both create a Carbon instance from a date string, but they differ in how they handle date format specification.

Carbon::parse()

It is designed to intelligently guess the format of a given date string. Convenient for handling various, commonly recognized date formats without explicitly defining the format. It internally uses PHP’s native DateTime parser. That means it works fine for all standard DateTime formats, such as:

Carbon::parse('2025-08-18');     // Y-m-d → Works
Carbon::parse('2025-08-18 12:30:00'); // Y-m-d H:i:s → Works
Carbon::parse('next Monday');   // Relative date → Works

In these cases, Carbon easily understands the string and converts it into a proper Carbon object. what happens when you pass a date like this?

Carbon::parse('18/08/2025');

You’ll see an error:

Why? Because the string 18/08/2025 is not a format PHP’s DateTime can automatically understand. Use Carbon::createFromFormat() whenever you deal with user input or non-standard formats like d/m/Y.

Carbon::createFromFormat()

It takes two arguments: the format string and the date string. The format string uses standard PHP date formatting characters (e.g., Y for year, m for month, d for day). Ensures accurate parsing, especially for non-standard or ambiguous date formats, by removing any guesswork. e.g., Carbon::createFromFormat(‘d/m/Y’, ’18/08/2025′).

Key Features Of Carbon

• Human-friendly methods like now(), today(), tomorrow(), yesterday().
• Easy date formatting with format() and toFormattedDateString().
• Date manipulation (addDays(), subMonths(), addYear() etc.).
• Comparison helpers (isToday(), isPast(), isFuture()).
• Human-readable differences ( diffForHumans() ).

In this tutorial, we’ll go through a few practical examples.

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure you have:

• Laravel 12 installed
• Composer set up
• Basic knowledge of Blade templates and Eloquent models

Change Date Format in Controller

In this example, we’ll learn how to change the date format using an Eloquent model and Carbon inside a controller.

1. Formatting Dates Using Eloquent Models

If you want to change the date format from an Eloquent model, you can do it like this.

<?php
 
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
 
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\User;
 
class DateExampleController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {  
        
        $user = User::first();
        $formattedDate = $user->created_at->format('d/m/Y');
         
        dd($formattedDate );
        
    }
}

The Output is :

"18/08/2025"

2. Date Format Using Carbon

In this example, we have taken some examples of different date formats, you can use any format which suits you. Since Carbon comes pre-installed with every Laravel project, you just need to import it and start using it.

<?php
 
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
 
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\User;
use Carbon\Carbon;
 
class DateExampleController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {  
        
        $date = "2025-08-10";
 
        //08/10/2025
        $formattedDate1 = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $date)->format('m/d/Y');
 
        //August 10, 2025
        $formattedDate2 = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $date)->format('F j, Y');
 
        //10-08-25
        $formattedDate3 = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $date)->format('d-m-y');
         
        //10 Aug,2025
        $formattedDate4 = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $date)->format('d M,Y');
 
        //August 10, 2025
        $formattedDate5 = Carbon::parse($date)->format('F j, Y');
             
        //Aug 10th 2025
       $formattedDate6 = Carbon::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $date)->isoFormat('MMM Do YYYY');              
         
        dd($formattedDate1,$formattedDate2,$formattedDate3,$formattedDate4,$formattedDate5,$formattedDate6 );
        
    }
}

The Output is :

"08/10/2025"
 
"August 10, 2025"
 
"10-08-25"
 
"10 Aug,2025"
 
"August 10, 2025"
 
"Aug 10th 2025"

Change Date Format in Blade Views

You can format dates directly from a model field using the format() method, since created_at and updated_at stored in the database follow PHP’s DateTime format.

<div class="card-body">
           @foreach($users as $user)
            {{$user->created_at ? $user->created_at->format('Y M D') : 'NAN'}}
           @endforeach
         
       </div>

If the date is in string form but follows PHP’s standard DateTime format, you can use Carbon::parse() in your Blade view.

<div class="card-body">
  {{ \Carbon\Carbon::parse($user->created_at)->format('Y-m-d')}}
</div>

If the date does not follow the standard format, and the format of the date string is known and consistent (e.g., 18/08/2025), you should use Carbon::createFromFormat() to convert it:

<div class="card-body">
 {{\Carbon\Carbon::createFromFormat('d/m/Y','18/08/2025')->format('Y-m-d') }}         
 </div>

Using Accessors in Eloquent Models

Instead of formatting dates every time in your Blade views, you can centralize the logic in your Eloquent model using an accessor. This keeps your code clean and reusable. Laravel follows a specific naming convention for accessors: get{AttributeName}Attribute()

• get : always use before attribute function name
• {AttributeName} : the name you want to access in Blade
• Attribute : always use after attribute name

<?php
 
namespace App\Models;
 
// use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\MustVerifyEmail;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
 
class User extends Authenticatable
{
    //other code
 
    public function getFormatedDateAttribute()
    {
        return $this->created_at->format('d M Y');
    }
       //other code
 
     
}

You can use in your blade file like this : The attribute name becomes formated_date.

<p> {{$user->formated_date}}</p>

The output is : 18 Aug 2025

Change Current Date Format

Sometimes, you don’t want to display a date from the database but simply show the current date in a specific format. Laravel makes this easy with Carbon, which comes pre-installed.

$today = Carbon::now()->isoFormat('MMM Do YYYY'); //Aug 19th 2025

Use isoFormat() for localized, human-readable formats.

Conclusion

In this Laravel 12 tutorial, we explored different ways to format dates using Carbon, Blade, Eloquent model accessors, and current date helpers. By default, Laravel stores dates in the database as Y-m-d H:i:s, which is ideal for storage but not always user-friendly in the UI.

With Carbon, you can:

• Use format() for standard PHP datetime formats.
• Use parse() for strings that already follow PHP’s standard format.
• Use createFromFormat() when the date string does not follow the standard but has a known and consistent format.
• Define accessors in your Eloquent models to keep your Blade templates clean and reusable.
• Display the current date in any style using now() with format() or isoFormat().

Laravel + Carbon makes date handling both flexible and powerful, giving you complete control over how dates are displayed across your application.