How to handle JSON responses for models that include Carbon dates on Laravel?

This might come in a bit late, but I usually make use of accessors and mutators to achieve this. For example, if I want all created_at and updated_at fields always to be returned in the ATOM format, I create a base model class extending Eloquent which every other model inherits:

use Carbon\Carbon as Carbon;use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model as Model;class BaseModel extends Model {    public function getCreatedAtAttribute($value)    {        return Carbon::parse($value)->toATOMString();    }    public function setCreatedAtAttribute($value)    {        $this->attributes['created_at'] = Carbon::parse($value)->toDateTimeString();    }    public function getUpdatedAtAttribute($value)    {        return Carbon::parse($value)->toATOMString();    }    public function setUpdatedAtAttribute($value)    {        $this->attributes['created_at'] = Carbon::parse($value)->toDateTimeString();    }}

First, I suggest that you separate API from controllers. Use resources for API calls.

For the object returned to Laravel, I don't know how are you processing it to get the error, but you should initiate a new Carbon instance if you want a Carbon date. Else you could just return the date as a string, Laravel's Model will handle the rest.

Assuming the object returned is:

{    "delivered_at":{"date":"2014-02-25 12:55:29","timezone_type":3,"timezone":"America\/Argentina\/Buenos_Aires"}}

And the variable $data will have the current response, you could simply overwrite delivered_at:

$data->delivered_at = $data->delivered_at->date;

Or if you want a Carbon object:

$data->delivered_at = new \Carbon\Carbon($data->delivered_at->date, $data->delivered_at->timezone);

This may not be the same but I would get this error when working with timestamps and carbon but using strtotime() on the data i was passing resolved my issue, may help you.