gbetts/ancient-dates

A helper to format and get info from ancient and prehistoric dates

Maintainers

Details

github.com/GeorgeBetts/ancient-dates

Source

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v1.0.0 2025-07-07 16:26 UTC

Requires

  • php: ^8.2

Requires (Dev)

MIT d4d993f776352b7201126d2eed649687bcd664e7

This package is auto-updated.

Last update: 2025-07-07 16:48:42 UTC

README

A helper to format and get info from ancient and prehistoric dates for PHP.

When working with dates in code they typically follow the ISO 8601 date format (YYYY-MM-DD). This standard means BCE dates are represented with a minus sign before the year (e.g., -3000-01-01).

Typically date formatters will ignore the minus and it's up to you to format the date appropriately.

Normally, a user would expect to see these dates in a more readable format, such as 3000 BCE, or 5025 years ago

This package helps you convert ancient dates to these formats and provides additional information such as the geological period.

Installation

Install the package via composer:

composer require gbetts/ancient-dates

Usage

Initialise your date using the AncientDate class

use Gbetts\AncientDates\AncientDate

$date = new AncientDate('-155000000-01-01T00:00:00Z');

The following methods are available for the date object:

$date->toBceString() // 155 million years BCE
$date->yearsAgo() // 155002025
$date->period() // Jurassic