Carbon
A PHP library that makes working with dates and times simpler than the built-in DateTime class.
- Stars
- 16.6k
- Forks
- 1.3k
- Licence
- MIT
- Language
- PHP
- Last update
- 4 days ago
- Type
- Library
What it is
Carbon is a PHP library that extends PHP's built-in DateTime class with shorter, more readable methods. It lets developers write things like adding a day, comparing dates, or showing a time as '2 minutes ago'. The README also shows support for many languages when formatting dates and times.
- Add or subtract days, weeks, or minutes from a date in one readable call
- Calculate someone's age from a birth date
- Show relative times like '2 minutes ago' and localize them into other languages
- Format dates in a chosen locale using isoFormat
- Freeze the current time during automated tests with setTestNow
Great for
- PHP developers who work with dates and times often
- Projects that need human-readable time differences such as '2 minutes ago'
- Applications that display dates in several languages
- Developers who want to mock the current time in tests
Not ideal for
- Non-PHP developers, since it only works in the PHP language
- People who only need a single simple date calculation and do not want an extra dependency
- Projects that cannot use Composer or manual file loading
How to get it
- 1
Install with a package manager
You'll need: PHP · Composer
Install with Composer
composer require nesbot/carbon - 2
Run it
- Install the package with Composer using the command above.
- Load Composer's autoloader with require 'vendor/autoload.php'.
- Add 'use Carbon\Carbon;' at the top of your PHP file.
- Run printf("Now: %s", Carbon::now()); to see the current date and time.
- 3
Get the most out of it
- Set a locale with ->locale('fr_FR') to format dates in other languages
- Use diffForHumans() for relative times such as '2 minutes ago'
- Use setTestNow() in tests to control what the current time is
- Check the online documentation at carbonphp.github.io/carbon for the full method list
Downloads
Strengths
- Short, readable method names compared with the plain DateTime class
- Supports many languages and regional variants for date output
- Installs easily with Composer and has an MIT license
Trade-offs
- Only usable from PHP code
- Adds a dependency to your project that you must keep updated
- The README is brief, so detailed usage depends on the separate online documentation
Stats synced from GitHub. The assessment above was drafted with AI from the project's README on 2026-10-29 and may miss recent changes — check the README before relying on a command. MIT licence: free to use, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.