What are common pitfalls when working with timestamps in PHP and MySQL databases?

Common pitfalls when working with timestamps in PHP and MySQL databases include not properly formatting timestamps before inserting them into the database, not handling timezones correctly, and not converting timestamps to the appropriate format when retrieving them from the database. To solve these issues, always format timestamps using PHP's date() function before inserting them into the database, store timestamps in UTC time in the database, and convert timestamps to the desired timezone when displaying them to users.

// Inserting a timestamp into the database
$timestamp = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('now'));
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (timestamp_column) VALUES ('$timestamp')";
mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Retrieving a timestamp from the database
$query = "SELECT timestamp_column FROM table_name";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);
$row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result);
$timestamp = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime($row['timestamp_column']));