In what scenarios would using MySQL date functions in conjunction with PHP be beneficial for date-related operations in a web application?

When working with date-related operations in a web application, using MySQL date functions in conjunction with PHP can be beneficial for tasks such as date formatting, date calculations, and date comparisons. By leveraging MySQL date functions, you can offload some of the date-related processing to the database server, which can improve performance and reduce the amount of data transferred between the database and the application.

// Example of using MySQL date functions in conjunction with PHP to format a date
$date = "2022-01-15";
$query = "SELECT DATE_FORMAT('$date', '%M %e, %Y') AS formatted_date";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);
$row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result);
$formatted_date = $row['formatted_date'];

echo $formatted_date; // Output: January 15, 2022