How can PHP be utilized to handle date and time operations efficiently when working with SQL databases?

When working with SQL databases, it is important to handle date and time operations efficiently to ensure accurate data storage and retrieval. PHP provides built-in functions to manipulate date and time values before inserting them into the database or when fetching them for display. One common approach is to use PHP's date() function to format dates before inserting them into SQL queries, and strtotime() function to convert SQL date strings back to PHP timestamps for manipulation.

// Example of formatting date before inserting into SQL query
$date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('2022-01-15'));
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (date_column) VALUES ('$date')";
// Execute the query

// Example of converting SQL date string back to PHP timestamp for manipulation
$sql_date = '2022-01-15';
$php_timestamp = strtotime($sql_date);
$formatted_date = date('l, F j, Y', $php_timestamp);
echo $formatted_date;