doctrine/cache · error · TypeError

Expected $expiration to be an instance of DateTimeInterface…

Error message

Expected $expiration to be an instance of DateTimeInterface or null, got %s

What it means

TypedCacheItem::expiresAt() accepts only DateTimeInterface or null and uses get_debug_type() to report the offending type in a TypeError. It is the strict-typed variant of CacheItem used by the typed cache facade.

Solutions

1. Wrap timestamps: new DateTimeImmutable('@' . $ts); parse strings: new DateTimeImmutable($str)
2. Use expiresAfter() for relative TTLs
3. Pass null to remove expiration

Example fix

// before
$item->expiresAt($json['expires']); // string '2030-01-01T00:00:00Z'
// after
$item->expiresAt(new DateTimeImmutable($json['expires']));

if ($expiration !== null && !$expiration instanceof \DateTimeInterface) { throw new InvalidArgumentException('expiration must be DateTimeInterface or null'); }

function acceptsExpiration(mixed $v): bool { return $v === null || $v instanceof \DateTimeInterface; }

try { $item->expiresAt($expiration); } catch (\TypeError $e) { /* handle invalid expiration */ }

When it happens

Trigger: Passing an int timestamp, date string, DateInterval, or non-DateTimeInterface object to expiresAt() on a TypedCacheItem (or via the typed cache wrapper).

Common situations: Same confusion as CacheItem: Unix timestamp instead of DateTime; unparsed date string from JSON/API; switching from the untyped to typed item class and old code no longer type-checks (though native types usually catch this earlier).

Understand the failure class

Background: Type mismatch errors: IllegalArgumentException, TypeError and type guards across 150 open-source libraries — this error's family across 150 libraries.

Related errors

• Expected $expiration to be an instance of DateTimeInterface…
• Expected $time to be either an integer, an instance of…
• Expected $time to be either an integer, an instance of…
• Cache key must be string
• Cache key length must be greater than zero.

AI-assisted analysis of doctrine/cache@e0a9919443 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/a821bab8350edcb7. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at lib/Doctrine/Common/Cache/Psr6/TypedCacheItem.php:62

    public function set(mixed $value): static
    {
        $this->value = $value;

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritDoc}
     */
    public function expiresAt($expiration): static
    {
        if ($expiration === null) {
            $this->expiry = null;
        } elseif ($expiration instanceof DateTimeInterface) {
            $this->expiry = (float) $expiration->format('U.u');
        } else {
            throw new TypeError(sprintf(
                'Expected $expiration to be an instance of DateTimeInterface or null, got %s',
                get_debug_type($expiration)
            ));
        }

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritDoc}
     */
    public function expiresAfter($time): static
    {
        if ($time === null) {
            $this->expiry = null;
        } elseif ($time instanceof DateInterval) {
            $this->expiry = microtime(true) + DateTime::createFromFormat('U', 0)->add($time)->format('U.u');
        } elseif (is_int($time)) {

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