In what situations would it be more efficient to let MySQL handle the conversion of Unix time values into readable date formats instead of using PHP functions?

When dealing with Unix time values in a MySQL database, it may be more efficient to let MySQL handle the conversion into readable date formats instead of using PHP functions. This is because MySQL has built-in functions like FROM_UNIXTIME() that can directly convert Unix timestamps into date formats without the need for additional processing in PHP. By offloading this task to MySQL, you can reduce the amount of data transferred between the database and the application, resulting in improved performance. 

$query = "SELECT id, name, FROM_UNIXTIME(timestamp_column) AS readable_date FROM table_name";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo $row['id'] . " - " . $row['name'] . " - " . $row['readable_date'] . "<br>";
}

Keywords

MySQL Unix time date format efficiency conversion

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