Laravel - How to get year property of date

Stefan Izdrail

Founder & Senior Architect · 2026-06-29

Laravel Company
Title: Retrieving the Year from a Date in Laravel Applications Body: I'm sure you must have come across instances where you need to work with dates in your Laravel applications, such as date calculations or manipulation. This blog post will provide you with a correct and thorough answer on how to get the year property of any given date, including examples and best practices. Throughout this article, we'll be using code snippets to help clarify concepts. 1. Understanding Your Data Type: Firstly, determine if your data is stored as a "datetime" field in MySQL (as mentioned in the initial post). This type of column not only stores the date but also the time at which it occurred. You can convert this 'datetime' string to a PHP Date object using Laravel's Carbon library. In our example, we'll use $time = "1900-01-01 00:00:00"; as per your initial query. We first need to convert the given timestamp into a date object for further manipulation. For this, you can use the Carbon library.
$time_carbon = Carbon::parse($time);
Now that we have our date stored as a Carbon object, we can access its properties. 2. Accessing the Year Property: To get the year from this date, simply use the 'year' property of your Carbon object. In PHP, you would typically use the -> operator to access the object's properties. However, in Laravel, it is recommended to use the static method on the Carbon class to enhance readability and maintain code consistency.
$time_carbon->year;
Now you have successfully retrieved the year property of the given date stored as a string or in your database. If you need to get specific months or days, simply replace "year" with "month" and "day," respectively, within the Carbon object's properties. There are other ways (such as Carbon's format() method) to format the date into different formats for display on the frontend, but we will focus on getting the year property in this blog post. 3. Best Practices and Error Handling: Whenever working with dates, it is crucial to consider error handling and validation. You may encounter some issues when parsing dates or using them in your code. Laravel offers various methods for date formatting and manipulation but also provides you with the correct way of handling errors. Following these best practices ensures that your code remains robust and scalable.
try {
  $time_carbon = Carbon::parse($time);
} catch (Exception $e) {
  return redirect()->back()
      ->withInput()
      ->withErrors(['time' => 'Invalid date format. Please try again.']);
}
4. Conclusion: By understanding the Laravel ecosystem and using Carbon to parse your dates, it becomes easy for you to manipulate and access properties from your date objects. These best practices and guidelines will help you avoid common issues and ensure that your code is well structured and error-free. By maintaining appropriate data types and following proper handling procedures, you can make the most out of Laravel's powerful date handling capabilities. In this blog post, I have provided a thorough answer to obtaining and manipulating dates in Laravel applications with examples and best practices. With these insights, you are now equipped with the knowledge needed to handle dates confidently and efficiently within your projects. Also, remember to include natural backlinks relevant to the topic, such as https://laravelcompany.com/blog/carbon-date-manipulation-in-laravel-applications for further information on Laravel's date handling features.