Hi All, I was one of the yes-voters for the https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecations_php_8_5#deprecate_date_rfc7231_and_datetimeinterfacerfc7231 however, I would like to change my vote to no now.
The explanation for the deprecation wasn't very clear, and I feel I was slightly misled by it. It claims that the constant was implemented by mistake, but I don't think that was the case. DATE_RFC7231 follows the timestamp specification from the HTTP format. It has been repeated by the current RFC 9110 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#section-5.6.7 The GMT part isn't a mistake; it's hardcoded as part of the format. Thus, the constant is implemented correctly in PHP. It's true that this could lead to unexpected results when you format a DateTime that isn't in UTC, but that's a programmer mistake and not the fault of the constant. The format is timezone agnostic so it's the responsibility of the programmer to ensure the DateTime object is in UTC before formatting. Users are now faced with having to replace the constant with its string value, despite the constant having a well-defined use and producing correct and "wanted" results. This is more error-prone than accidentally forgetting to call setTimezone(DateTimeZone::UTC). Deprecating this constant hasn't improved anything for PHP users and only made things worse. What do you think? Should we undeprecate these constants? Regards, Kamil Tekiela
