Use date_Create that does not throw exception or warning

[pschoffer]

Description of the Change

This is inspired by Automattic#113

It seems that new \DateTime( $meta_value, \wp_timezone() ); throws not only exception but also a E_WARNING in certain cases.

There is the date_create alternative, that according to manual is an alias. While testing it though, I found that, it returns false on failure and does NOT throw an exception or warning (as far as I can see).

There are already unittests covering this function that are passing and also testing on the local dev-environment results in good results.

Alternate Designs

Benefits

Possible Drawbacks

Verification Process

Checklist:

• I have read the CONTRIBUTING document.
• My code follows the code style of this project.
• My change requires a change to the documentation.
• I have updated the documentation accordingly.
• I have added tests to cover my change.
• All new and existing tests passed.

Applicable Issues

Changelog Entry

Changed - Meta parsing tweak to avoid E_WARNINGs

[sjinks]

date_create() indeed does not spit a warning:

• https://heap.space/xref/PHP-7.3/ext/date/php_date.c?r=d70058a1#2676
• https://heap.space/xref/PHP-7.4/ext/date/php_date.c?r=26b1572d#2721
• https://heap.space/xref/PHP-8.0/ext/date/php_date.c?r=26b1572d#2237

Warnings are spit only when php_date_initialize() is invoked from the constructor (the ctor argument is 1); for date_create ctor is 0.

[pschoffer]

Thanks for that @sjinks . One day I will bother you to teach me your super-power of tracking that down (I tried but failed)