Insert current DateTime manually in phpmyadmin using symfony - symfony

Question

So i send the data to the controller using ajax and i want to insert it in the comment table; everything works fine if i delete these two lines about inserting current datetime for the comment and setting my entity nullable
but how can i insert current datetime ;
Controller Code
if($request->get('texte')==NULL)
{
throw new AccessDeniedException('This user does not have access
to this section.');
}
$user = $this->getUser();
if (!is_object($user) || !$user instanceof UserInterface)
{
throw new AccessDeniedException('This user does not have access
to this section.');
}
$comment = new Commentaire();
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$veterinaire=$em->getRepository("MyAppUserBundle:User")->findOneById($request->get('cible'));
$comment->setIdCible($veterinaire);
$comment->setIdClient($user);
$comment->setTexte($request->get('texte'));
$literalTime = \DateTime::createFromFormat("d/m/Y H:i",date_default_timezone_get());
$comment->setDate($literalTime);
$em->persist($comment);
$em->flush();
return new Response("");
}
My Entity :
/**
* #var \DateTime
*
* #ORM\Column(name="date", type="datetime", nullable=false)
*/
private $date;
I even tried to set my AppKernel __construct
public function __construct($environment, $debug)
{
date_default_timezone_set( 'Africa/Tunis' );
parent::__construct($environment, $debug);
}

Answer 1

You just need to pass a DateTime object to setDate:
$comment->setDate(new \DateTime());
or if you want to specify timezone:
$comment->setDate(new \DateTime('now', new \DateTimeZone('Africa/Tunis')));
Of course you can extract creation of DateTime object from the setDate and have additional variable to pass.