How can PHP developers avoid potential pitfalls when handling MySQL timestamp values in their applications?

When handling MySQL timestamp values in PHP applications, developers should be cautious of timezone discrepancies that can lead to inaccurate date and time representations. To avoid potential pitfalls, it is recommended to set the MySQL connection timezone to UTC and handle date conversions consistently in PHP using the DateTime class. 

// Set the MySQL connection timezone to UTC
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=my_database', 'username', 'password');
$pdo->exec("SET time_zone = '+00:00';");

// Retrieve timestamp value from MySQL and convert it to DateTime object
$stmt = $pdo->query("SELECT timestamp_column FROM my_table WHERE id = 1");
$row = $stmt->fetch();
$timestamp = new DateTime($row['timestamp_column']);

// Display the timestamp in a specific timezone (e.g., UTC)
$timestamp->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
echo $timestamp->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Keywords

PHP MySQL timestamp timezone date_format

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