Correctly determine if date string is a valid date in that format

Question

I\'m receiving a date string from an API, and it is formatted as yyyy-mm-dd.

I am currently using a regex to validate the string format, which works ok,

Answer 1

How about this one?

We simply use a try-catch block.

$dateTime = 'an invalid datetime';

try {
    $dateTimeObject = new DateTime($dateTime);
} catch (Exception $exc) {
    echo 'Do something with an invalid DateTime';
}

This approach is not limited to only one date/time format, and you don't need to define any function.