# Render a DateTime Object in Twig

### The date filter
In Twig, the `date` filter uses the same [DateTime format](https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.format.php) of PHP
to render DateTime instances in server-side.

```php
require_once './vendor/autoload.php';

$loader = new \Twig\Loader\FilesystemLoader('./themes');

$twig = new \Twig\Environment($loader);

$twig->getExtension(\Twig\Extension\CoreExtension::class)->setTimezone('Australia/Melbourne');

$dt = new DateTime("2010-07-05 06:00:00", new DateTimeZone("Australia/Melbourne"));

echo $twig->render('render-a-datetime.twig', array("myDateTime" => $dt));
```
In the above PHP code snippet, the function `setTimezone` is used to set the default timezone globally in Twig.
The new DateTime instance `$dt` is created with the timezone of `Australia/Melbourne`.
After that, it is passed to the template file render-a-datetime.twig.
In the template file, we can render the DateTime variable `myDateTime` like this:
```html
{{ myDateTime|date("d M Y H:i") }}
```
The output will be:
```html
05 Jul 2010 06:00
```

If want to show the current date in Twig, we can use the word `now`.
```html
{{ "now"|date("d M Y H:i") }}
``` 

### The date filter with a timezone
We can override the default timezone in the `date` filter with a given timezone string.
For the details of the supported timezones, you can refer to [List of Supported Timezones](https://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php).
For example, you can display the current date instance for different cities.
```html
<p>
   New York: {{ "now"|date("d M Y H:i", "America/New_York") }} <br>
   Paris: {{ "now"|date("d M Y H:i", "Europe/Paris") }} <br>
   Hong Kong: {{ "now"|date("d M Y H:i", "Asia/Hong_Kong") }} <br>
   Melbourne: {{ "now"|date("d M Y H:i", "Australia/Melbourne") }}
</p>
```
The above code will output:
```html
New York: 20 Oct 2020 20:30
Paris: 21 Oct 2020 02:30
Hong Kong: 21 Oct 2020 08:30
Melbourne: 21 Oct 2020 11:30
``` 

Thanks for reading!
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