default date formats cakephp 4

h < 1>how to print dates in your language in a cakephp view

First of all imagine you have a datetime field in your table, tipically we have a created and modified field in our table.

The lazy programmer prints just this:

<?= $table->modified ?>

And he will get

2020-12-09 18:49

Not so user-friendly.

The time helper

You can use the great TimeHelper in your views to get the date correctly formatted

<?= $this->Time->nice($reservation->modified) ?>

so you wil get

Dec 9th, 2020 - 6:49PM

Print the date in your language

In case you are an Italian programmer, and you want the dates in your language, you should define a default locale in your config/bootstrap.php

// put this in your config/bootstap.php

use Cake\I18n\FrozenDate;
use Cake\I18n\FrozenTime;
use Cake\I18n\Time;
use Cake\I18n\Date;

Time::setDefaultLocale('it-IT'); // For any mutable DateTime
FrozenTime::setDefaultLocale('it-IT'); // For any immutable DateTime
Date::setDefaultLocale('it-IT'); // For any mutable Date
FrozenDate::setDefaultLocale('it-IT'); // For any immutable Date

After this, your nice date will be in Italian along all the program

9 dic 2020, 18:49