mareg/rough-date

Rough date object allowing dates like `Jan 2005` or `2006`

1.0.7 2026-08-09 19:08 UTC

Requires

• php: ^7.2, <7.5

Requires (Dev)

• phpspec/phpspec: ^6.1.1

GPL-3.0-only

Published on Packagist.org on 2026-08-09 19:27 UTC

README

Needed to store a "rough date" in one of my project, may be useful for otheres.

Installation

Execute from shell the following command:

$ composer require mareg/rough-date

Or add "mareg/rough-date": "^1.0" to your composer.json:

    "require": {
        "mareg/rough-date": "^1.0"
    },

Usage

Create a RoughDate object from the string:

$roughDate = RoughDate::fromString('May 2005');
echo $roughDate->format();

Or from a DateTime date object:

$date = new \DateTime();
$roughDate = RoughDate::fromDateTime($date);
echo $roughDate->format();

Accepted date formats

When creating an object through RoughDate::fromString():

• Y-m-d, e.g. 2015-02-22, but also 2013-05-00 and 2013-00-00 are correct
• Y/m/d and Y.m.d are accepted, as long as the same separator is used throughout
• Y-m, Y/m and Y.m, e.g. 2013-05
• j M Y and j F Y, with an optional dot after the day, e.g. 13. May 2005, 23 September 1925
• M j, Y and F j, Y, e.g. May 13, 2005
• M Y and F Y, e.g. May 1985
• Y, e.g. 1978

Unknown parts are written as 00, and precision is truncated from the right: an unknown month means the day is unknown too. Anything else is rejected with an UnrecognizedDateFormat exception, including:

• impossible calendar dates, e.g. 2015-02-30 and 1993-02-29
• a month outside 01–12, e.g. 1993-13
• a known day inside an unknown month, e.g. 1993-00-15
• mixed separators, e.g. 1993/09-05

Output date formats

When calling RoughDate::format():

• For a full date output accepts all variables as in date() method
• For other dates only available variables will be substituded and unavailable ones will be removed, e.g.:
• for date 2015-02-00 and format j M Y you'll get Feb 2015
• for date 1978-00-00 and format j M Y you'll get 1978

Removed variables leave the literals around them in place, which is why the examples above keep the spaces that separated them. Literals escaped with a backslash are always kept, so \Y\e\a\r Y gives Year 1978.