setDate to assign year month and day to date object in PHP

Set year, month and day with setDate()

setDate() replaces the calendar date while preserving the time portion. DateTime mutates; DateTimeImmutable returns a new object.

$date = new DateTimeImmutable('2026-01-01 08:30:00');
$changed = $date->setDate(2026, 9, 14);
echo $changed->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Use the returned object when calling setDate() on DateTimeImmutable.

We can assign new date to any date object by using setDate function. Using this we can change the date object.

setDate(Year, month, day)

Here are some examples to set the date.

date_default_timezone_set('America/Chicago');

$today = new DateTime;
echo $today->format('Y-m-d ');
echo "<br>";
$today->setDate(13,11,20);
echo $today->format('Y-m-d');

The output is here

2026-09-29 
0013-11-20

IN above code we can change the setDate function parameters and check the output. We can change to higher values for year and month , the function will adjust it to the next values and display the correct dates. Here are the changes ( only )

$today->setDate(13,14,31);

The output is here

2026-09-29 
0014-03-03

Procedural style

$date = date_create();
date_date_set($date, 2019, 8, 13);
echo date_format($date, 'Y-m-d');

Output is here

2019-08-13

PHP Date Functions setTime() : Set time for date object Timestamp in PHP Displaying calendar for selection of date by user

Subhendu Mohapatra

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setDate(): sets the date in an existing DateTime object

Set year, month and day with setDate()

Procedural style

Subhendu Mohapatra