Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function format() on null-CodePudding

Hi Im encountering fatal error on this and i cant find out any solutions here,

this is the error it returns when this function is called.

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function format() on null

$startDate = $data->started_at ? \DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $data->started_at) : null;

    return $data ? (object) [
        'planId' => $data->plan_id ?? '',
        'comment' => $data->comment ?? '',
        'facilitator' => $data->facilitator ?? '',
        'date' => $startDate->format('d/m/Y') ?? '',
        'time' => $startDate->format('H:i:s') ?? '',

    ] : (object) [];
}

additional Info,

I am trying to retrieve data on this, however in this case I have no startDate and still would like to return the data that was save. Im not sure if my syntax is right.

Thanks Lads

CodePudding user response：

Since $startDate can sometimes be null, you need to check if it's null before calling format() on it, since you can't call a method on a null value.

If you're using PHP 8.0, you can combine null-safe operators (?->) with your existing null-coalescing operators (??):

'date' => $startDate?->format('d/m/Y') ?? '',
'time' => $startDate?->format('H:i:s') ?? ''

Otherwise you can use ternary operators (? :):

'date' => $startDate === null ? '' : $startDate->format('d/m/Y'),
'time' => $startDate === null ? '' : $startDate->format('H:i:s') ?? ''