Need help posting Date in MySQL DB

[basil]

I am writing a little database program that takes data from a HTML form and inserts in into a database. I am gaving trouble getting the date to post. I have read the manuel and even bought a book titled "PhP and MySQL" but I guess I am just not understanding something about the date functions or how PhP interacts with MySQL with respect to the date function. Here is a snippet of code in my progam. Can someone tell me what I need to do to get the currect date into my SQL database?:

<start snippet>

$marque = addslashes($marque);
$category = addslashes($category);
$title = addslashes($keyword);
$techtip = addslashes($techtip);
$thedate = date("Y m d");

//Note, the below echo does echo the date as yyyy-mm-dd
echo("<p>The date is ".$thedate."</p>");

// CONNECT TO THE DATABASE SERVER

$dbcnx = @mysql_connect("localhost", "myhost", "password");

if (!$dbcnx) {
echo("<p>Unable to connect to the database server at this time.</p>" );
exit();
}

// SELECT THE My DATABASE

if(!@mysql_select_db("techtips")){
echo( "<p>Unable to locate the Tech Tip database at this time.</p>" );
exit();
}

//INSERT DATA INTO DATABASE

$query = "INSERT INTO tips SET
member = '$membernumber',
date_col = '$thedate',
title = '$title',
marque ='$marque',
category = '$category',
tip = '$techtip'";

<end snippet>

Now, after executing this code, all the data goes into my DB as it should, except the date_col (which is in the date format in my D😎 just shows 0000-00-00 and NOT the date that I am trying to pass to it. WHat am I doing wrong?

Thanks,
Basil

[cahva]

 
 $thedate = date("Y m d");

//Note, the below echo does echo the date as yyyy-mm-dd
echo("<p>The date is ".$thedate."</p>"); 

Well, It doesnt. It prints out: yyyy mm dd.
It should be:
$thedate = date("Y-m-d");

But I would put the current date straight to INSERT query using NOW(), so you actually dont need to make $thedate-variable:

//INSERT DATA INTO DATABASE

$query = "INSERT INTO tips SET
member = '$membernumber',
date_col = NOW(),
...

[basil]

Thanks cahva! I finally did (by brute force) figure out putting in the dashes, but I like the NOW() idea better. I'll try that,
Thanks
Basil

[JohnM_2000]

Personally I insert the time into an INT column as a UNIX timestamp (the return value from time()), and use date() when displaying it...