How can PHP developers effectively handle and display date and time information from a database while ensuring accurate sorting and grouping of data based on dates?

When handling date and time information from a database in PHP, it is important to ensure that the dates are stored and retrieved in a consistent format to allow for accurate sorting and grouping. One way to achieve this is by using the MySQL DATETIME data type for storing dates and times in a standardized format. When retrieving the data in PHP, you can use the DateTime class to manipulate and format the dates as needed for display.

// Assuming $row is an associative array containing date and time information fetched from the database
$date = new DateTime($row['date_column']);
$formatted_date = $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
echo $formatted_date;