Storing date

[jaddy]

Hi,
What is the best way to store the date (and the time) in mySQL database. I am sure that it is not using some PHP functions but using mySQL functions, but how??

I made a date field in my database, but I couldn't be able to fill it with the correct date (my systems date), I get 00.00.000 values whenever a record is inserted!!

Thx...

[jayant]

Well there do exist date data type in MySQL but personally I prefer storing unix timestamp.
It is actually a good idea to have PHP give the timestamp and the database and the script itself might be on different servers and hence have different times, then care will have to be taken regarding the difference, which if you pass the timestamp returned by PHP function time(), that can be taken care of more easily.

$tm=time();
then use $tm in sql query.

anyway,
if you still wanna use MySQL functions, see documentations of:-
CURTIME()
CURDATE()
UNIX_TIMESTAMP()
on MySQL.com

[jaddy]

Thanks jayant,

What I am trying to reach is following the rule which says: "If there are two jobs which can be done in both MySQL and PHP, do it using MySQL".

For example, It is better to use the "order by" and not "ksort()" for sorting. So is it better to do jobs in MySQL for a better performance?

And also where can I find some sources that can help me in optimizing my PHP scripts, specially for mySQL..

Thank you.