Mastering Date Formatting in Laravel Models

Laravel offers powerful tools to control how dates are formatted when models are serialized to arrays or JSON. Whether you need consistent global formatting or attribute-specific customization, Laravel’s date-handling capabilities allow you to customize and refine how dates are displayed throughout your application.

Here’s a foundational example that demonstrates global date serialization in a base model:

namespace App\Models;  
  
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;  
use DateTimeInterface;  
  
class BaseModel extends Model  
{  
    protected function serializeDate(DateTimeInterface $date)  
    {  
        return $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');  
    }  
}

Practical Example: Date Formatting in a Booking System

Consider a booking system where various date formats are required for specific attributes:

namespace App\Models;  
  
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;  
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Casts\Attribute;  
use DateTimeInterface;  
  
class Booking extends Model  
{  
    protected $casts = [  
        'check_in' => 'datetime:Y-m-d',  
        'check_out' => 'datetime:Y-m-d',  
        'created_at' => 'datetime:Y-m-d H:i:s',  
    ];  
  
    protected function serializeDate(DateTimeInterface $date)  
    {…