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PHPNomad Chronos Integration

Chronos-backed implementation of the phpnomad/chrono catalog. Ships one concrete class, ChronosChronoStrategy, that fulfills every non-platform chrono interface against cakephp/chronos — with IntlDateFormatter providing the locale-aware formatting that Chronos 3.x dropped.

The default comprehensive integration for chrono. About a fifth the install footprint of nesbot/carbon with effectively the same surface, plus locale support through ext-intl instead of bundled translation files.

Requirements

PHP 8.2 or newer, ext-intl, phpnomad/chrono ^1.0, cakephp/chronos ^2.4 || ^3.0.

Installation

The package's Initializer registers ChronosChronoStrategy against the chrono catalog. Apps using PHPNomad's loader pick this up automatically.

What gets bound

A single ChronosChronoStrategy instance fulfills these 28 chrono interfaces:

• ClockStrategy
• CanCheckIfPast, CanCheckIfFuture, CanCheckIfWeekend, CanCheckIfWeekday
• CanCheckSameDay, CanCheckSameMonth, CanCheckSameYear, CanCheckBetween
• CanApplyModifier, CanAddInterval, CanSubtractInterval
• CanGetStartOfDay, CanGetEndOfDay, CanGetStartOfMonth, CanGetEndOfMonth, CanGetStartOfYear, CanGetEndOfYear
• CanGetDifference, CanGetDifferenceInDays, CanGetDifferenceInHours, CanGetDifferenceInMinutes, CanGetDifferenceInSeconds
• CanParseDate, CanParseDateWithFormat
• CanFormatDate, CanFormatLocalizedDate, CanFormatRelativeTime

What does NOT get bound here

HasTimezone and HasLocale are intentionally not implemented by this integration. Chronos does not own the platform's timezone or locale; those come from the host environment.

The ChronosChronoStrategy constructor declares both as dependencies:

Pair with phpnomad/wordpress-integration (which resolves both from WordPress site settings) or supply your own concretes. Without a HasTimezone and HasLocale binding in the container, the strategy cannot be instantiated.

Model-side chrono interfaces (HasCreatedDate, HasModifiedDate) are likewise not implemented here — they are contracts for domain models, not platform capabilities.

Behavior notes

• Format string syntax differs across methods. format() takes PHP's native date() syntax. formatLocalized() takes ICU pattern syntax via IntlDateFormatter — see the ICU patterns reference for the grammar.
• relative() is English-only. Chronos 3.x ships a deliberately English-only diffForHumans translator, so the injected locale is ignored by this method. Apps needing locale-aware relative-time strings should pair with phpnomad/wordpress-integration (which uses WordPress's translation pipeline against human_time_diff()) or phpnomad/carbon-integration (Carbon ships 281 locales).
• isBetween is inclusive on both bounds, matching Chronos's between(true) default.
• apply() uses native DateTimeImmutable::modify(), so PHP's default month-overflow behavior applies. Prefer CanAddInterval with explicit intervals for safer math.
• parseFormat() throws InvalidArgumentException when the input cannot be parsed against the supplied format.
• *`diffInmethods are signed.**diffInDays($a, $b)returns positive when$bis after$a` and negative otherwise.
• Chronos's setTestNow() is honored by now() and therefore by every predicate that consults it, which makes the whole strategy deterministic in tests.

Testing in your own app

Because now() delegates to Chronos::now(), Chronos's built-in test helper works without any chrono-specific machinery:

For PSR-20-style fixed clocks, bind any PSR-20 implementation directly to ClockStrategy in your DI container — it will replace just the clock binding while leaving the rest of the Chronos-backed cluster intact.

Why Chronos and not Carbon

Chronos is a CakePHP-maintained immutable datetime library that started as a fork of early Carbon and has stayed disciplined about scope. The trade-offs:

• Roughly five times lighter than Carbon by file count and dependency footprint
• No bundled translation files — uses ext-intl (bundled with most PHP distributions) for locale-aware formatting
• Same API shape as Carbon for the methods chrono uses — drop-in equivalent
• English-only diffForHumans is the one real concession; pair with a locale-aware integration if needed

If you already have Carbon in your stack (Laravel apps especially), use phpnomad/carbon-integration — there's no marginal cost since Carbon is already loaded.

License

MIT