title: Laravel searching for date - Check if string is an actual date, or a month
body: <p>In my app I have a search function which I use for searching my appointments. It's a simple approach using LIKE to find and match any string being searched for.</p>
  
  <p>The tricky part is, that I also want to be able to search for "january" and return all results found that were <code>created_at</code> is january. Next to this, I want to be able to search for "24 jan" or "24 january" and return all appointments that were created on the 24th of january. I can do this using either one of the following:</p>
  
  <p>When searching for "january":</p>
  
  <pre><code>$result = Carbon::createFromFormat('F', $search)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When searching for "24 jan" for example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$result = Carbon::createFromFormat('d M', $search)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It all works IF I indeed do a search for "january". But when I search for something else, like "doctor", it fails and gives me an error. My question is, how can I check if the search string is a date (or simply a month or a day and a month as posted above) and return true if it's a match, but false if it's not?</p>