date storage efficiency

[Anon]

hi,
i have a 2 dates with time in them submitted by a user through a form.
is it more efficient to convert it into a unix timestamp and store it in the mysql database and convert it back when i retrieve it, or store it in seperate columns (eg. hour_start, min_start, date, month, year)?

Thanks!

[Anon]

Either store it as a unix time stamp (this is useful if you will be doing a lot of date time work in your php code) OR as a DATE type in SQL (this is useful if you'll be doing a lot of selects based on dates etc...)

But don't store it as seperate pieces, that's the least efficient way to do it.

[Anon]

thanks!
how would a DATE type work?

[smarlowe]

Easy, you insert the date in one of several ways (i.e. 2001-01-01, 1 jan 2001, 01-01-2001, 01/01/2001 etc...) and the database stores it as a date stamp. When you do a select, the database formats it into a date stamp that you should be able to change the style of. The method for changing the default or reformatting it on the fly is different for each database, but each one usually has a nice section on date types in it's manual.