Site Crashed U_ILLEGAL_ARGUMENT_ERROR in IntlDateFormatter

EDIT: Affects 8.1.25, 8.2.12, and 8.3.0RC3+

Hello All,
1.5.8 (forget the revision) on php 8.2. Woke this morning to white screens in admin and front end.

[02-Nov-2023 10:05:18 America/New_York] Request URI: /manufactuername-m-1.html, IP address: 11.22.33.44
--> PHP Fatal error: Uncaught IntlException: datefmt_create: invalid locale: U_ILLEGAL_ARGUMENT_ERROR in /home/account/www.website.com/includes/classes/zcDate.php:87
Stack trace:
#0 /home/account/www.website.com/includes/classes/zcDate.php(87): IntlDateFormatter->__construct('C', 3, -1)
#1 /home/account/www.website.com/includes/classes/zcDate.php(39): zcDate->initializeConversionArrays()
#2 /home/account/www.website.com/includes/autoload_func.php(47): zcDate->__construct()
#3 /home/account/www.website.com/includes/application_top.php(237): require('/home/account...')
#4 /home/account/www.website.com/index.php(25): require('/home/account...')
#5 {main}
  thrown in /home/account/www.website.com/includes/classes/zcDate.php on line 87.

Please help.

Thank you,
John

Me too, thought it was the hosting service

I just switched php back to 8.0 and it's running again seemingly without errors or warnings. I'd really like to get this resolved though so we can go back to 8.2.

Thanks again,
John

This has just started happening on my test site. Live is ok.
It appears that this code in includes/classes/zcDate.php is the issue

            $this->locale = setlocale(LC_TIME, 0);

            // -----
            // Using the current locale, retrieve the locale-specific 'short' date and time
            // formats.
            //
            $format = new IntlDateFormatter(
                $this->locale,
                IntlDateFormatter::SHORT,
                IntlDateFormatter::NONE
            );

The issue appears to be that if setlocale has not been called before zcDate is initialised the server returns a local of "C" this appears to mean not set yet.
I found this from @DrByte https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/12561#issuecomment-1786428271

I don't know enough to fix this.

I suspect that zcDate class is being initialised before setlocale is set in

includes/languages/lang.english.php
YOURADMIN/languages/lang.english.php

If I add the setlocale from the language file to the begining index.php and YOURADMIN/index.php the system seems to work OK. This is a workaround and not a solution! I will try a few other things to find a solution. Mean while if @drByte, @lat9... could look at this.

I agree. index.php requires includes/application_top.php, which loads the autoloaders including config.core.php, which calls zcDate.php
only after application_top.php does all its stuff are the language files parsed, including the setlocale
set locale may need to be moved to configure.php instead...

lol, now that I'm all caught up on github convo I see that drbyte has just about decided the same.
https://github.com/zencart/zencart/issues/6037

Yes, the latest updates to PHP (PHP 8.1.25 and 8.2.12) added a sudden fatal error when the locale is not explicitly configured on the server.
They claim to be backing it down in subsequent PHP 8.1 (8.1.26) and 8.2 (8.2.13) releases, but appear to be keeping it in 8.3-onward, so a workaround is needed:
ie: configure a default locale in PHP.

IMO the simplest fix for existing stores, is simply to add a default locale to your configure.php files:

/includes/configure.php
and
/admin/includes/configure.php

@setlocale(LC_TIME, ['en_US', 'en_US.UTF-8', 'en-US']);
```
(Obviously, you could put your own preferred language locale in there, but is overridden later anyway. See note below.)

It can be put on its own line anywhere after the opening "<php" line or at the bottom of the file.

Zen Cart's default application_top bootstrapping process will auto-detect whatever language the store and/or customer really wants, and will reset it to that before any normal output is generated. So don't need to do any additional changes to your language files etc.

This doesn't seem to work on my test installation. PHP 8.1. Fails on both storefront and admin.

I appreciate the input from the Zen Cart team.

But the proposed fix is also not working on my test cart. ZC 1.5.8, PHP 8.2

Hmmm. Investigating ...

proposed

@setlocale(LC_TIME, 'en');

doesn't work, but the complete:

$locales = ['en_US', 'en_US.utf8', 'en', 'English_United States.1252'];
@setlocale(LC_TIME, $locales);

DOES work. No clue why.

My bad. Turns out 'en' alone isn't "valid" either. And that's what I had in my clipboard when I pasted. Doh!

EDITED: now recommending:

@setlocale(LC_TIME, ['en_US', 'en_US.UTF-8', 'en-US']);

Add this to the end of includes/configure.php and YOUR_ADMIN/includes/configure.php

DrByte:

My bad. Turns out 'en' isn't "valid" either. And that's what I had in my clipboard when I pasted. Doh!

Use:

@setlocale(LC_TIME, 'en_US');

I can confirm this works in my testing. en is so close to en_US. :D

Confirmed on admin and storefront in PHP 8.1. Thanks, @drbyte!

I updated my "fix" with adding UTF-8 fallback, just in case.
(FYI The hyphenated uppercase en_US.UTF-8 works on my dev site, where the en_US.utf8 lowercase without hyphen shows as invalid when used on its own. Might be different on different servers with different locale packs installed at the server level.)

And for local PC servers running Windows, it seems 'en-US' may be what's needed.

Confirmed working on php 8.2. Thank you all very much!

Best,
John

So I was getting the HTTP 500 error when going to my store as a user or an admin. I switched the PHP to 8 and still same issue, I switched back to 8.1 and it works.

I was getting the following error

[08-Nov-2023 20:52:03 America/New_York] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught IntlException: datefmt_create: invalid locale: U_ILLEGAL_ARGUMENT_ERROR in /homepages/website/store/includes/classes/zcDate.php:90
Stack trace:
#0 /homepages/website/store/includes/classes/zcDate.php(90): IntlDateFormatter->__construct()
#1 /homepages/website/store/includes/classes/zcDate.php(39): zcDate->initializeConversionArrays()
#2 /homepages/website/store/includes/autoload_func.php(47): zcDate->__construct()
#3 /homepages/website/store/Skill-ieE-trusT/includes/application_top.php(42): require('/homepages/36/d...')
#4 /homepages/website/store/Skill-ieE-trusT/home.php(9): require('/homepages/36/d...')
#5 /homepages/website/store/Skill-ieE-trusT/index.php(11): require('/homepages/36/d...')
#6 {main}
thrown in /homepages/website/store/includes/classes/zcDate.php on line 90

[08-Nov-2023 20:52:03 America/New_York] Request URI: /store/Skill-ieE-trusT/, IP address: 136.226.82.111
--> PHP Fatal error: Uncaught IntlException: datefmt_create: invalid locale: U_ILLEGAL_ARGUMENT_ERROR in /homepages/website/store/includes/classes/zcDate.php:90
Stack trace:
#0 /homepages/website/store/includes/classes/zcDate.php(90): IntlDateFormatter->__construct()
#1 /homepages/website/store/includes/classes/zcDate.php(39): zcDate->initializeConversionArrays()
#2 /homepages/website/store/includes/autoload_func.php(47): zcDate->__construct()
#3 /homepages/website/store/Skill-ieE-trusT/includes/application_top.php(42): require('/homepages/36/d...')
#4 /homepages/website/store/Skill-ieE-trusT/home.php(9): require('/homepages/36/d...')
#5 /homepages/website/store/Skill-ieE-trusT/index.php(11): require('/homepages/36/d...')
#6 {main}
thrown in /homepages/website/store/includes/classes/zcDate.php on line 90.

spoke too soon. I did add the code to the config files and it fixed it.

@setlocale(LC_TIME, ['en_US', 'en_US.UTF-8', 'en-US']);

Few month ago I submitted on github a re-write of class file zc_date.php based on intl date_format object instead of srftime(). It was not accepted at the time but it might change now. Basically instead of using depracated strftime parameters it uses datefm_create if installed and if not date(). I made it compatible with strftime parameters so old plugins still work.
I use this mod on my live site and some test sites and was not affected when updating to PHP 8.1.25 or 8.2.12!
If you want to try it you can just copy class file zc_date.php (after backing up your original version). If you want to be more efficient and eliminate old strftime parameters copy/merge all other files.
By the way I hope that in new Zencart 2.0 strftime % parameter won't be use any more.
here is the link to github repo: https://github.com/piloujp/zcDate_mod

Noting that the zcDate.php class is PHP version-specific, using strftime for PHP versions < 8.1 and using the IntlDateFormatter class (if that PHP extension is installed) otherwise.