fatal error "unconstructed IntlDateFormatter" after upgrade to php 8.1

Question

On submitted contribution pages, I get a fatal php error "unconstructed IntlDateFormatter." At first I thought the answer was a simple case of a missing php-intl extension. However, it is there. That has brought me up short. Searching this site and the web generally comes up with plenty of cases where Intl is missing, but I can also see that in those cases the error is that it is missing not "unconstructed." I am completely mystified as to what the problem is. I'm hoping someone here has an idea. Here is the Apache error log:

[Mon Nov 27 20:46:49.071498 2023] [proxy_fcgi:error] [pid 2064307:tid 140013073311424] [client 142.113.152.41:60473] 
AH01071: Got error 'PHP message: PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Found unconstructed IntlDateFormatter in /var/www/civi.sitename.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/vendor/pear/log/php-8.1-strftime.php:105
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/civi.sitename.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/vendor/pear/log/php-8.1-strftime.php(105): IntlDateFormatter->format()
#1 /var/www/civi.sitename.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/vendor/pear/log/php-8.1-strftime.php(204): PHP81_BC\\{closure}()
#2 [internal function]: PHP81_BC\\{closure}()
#3 /var/www/civi.sitename.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/vendor/pear/log/php-8.1-strftime.php(185): preg_replace_callback()
#4 /var/www/civi.sitename.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/vendor/pear/log/Log.php(887): PHP81_BC\\strftime()
#5 /var/www/civi.sitename.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/vendor/pear/log/Log/file.php(294): Log->formatTime()
#6 /var/www/civi.sitename.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/...', referer: https://civi.sitename.org/civicrm/contribute/transact/?_qf_Confirm_display=true&qfKey=CRMContributeControllerContribution187bnnkv5540g8sk0cok0g04owsc8gcosog88k8cs84808w4ok_5444

No entry in the CiviCRM log.

Tried with both PHP 8.1.26 and 8.2.13. Works fine with PHP 7.4. Current php extension list is a perfect match for php-7.4 on the same server except for php-json which seems to be baked in starting with version 8.

I'm running Civi 5.66.1 on WordPress 6.4.1.

Answer 1

See https://lab.civicrm.org/dev/core/-/issues/4739.

If you want to stay on 5.66 instead of upgrading to 5.67 you have some choices:

• Downgrade php to 8.1.24
• Apply the patch at https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/pull/27981 but you'll have to manually do it since it won't apply cleanly.

(It should work with php 8.1.26 too since they released a temp patch, but you said you tried so I'm not sure about that.)