What are some best practices for converting and storing date values in PHP, particularly when using the DATE data type in a database?

When converting and storing date values in PHP, it is important to ensure that the date format is consistent and compatible with the DATE data type in your database. One common approach is to use the strtotime() function to convert a date string into a Unix timestamp, and then use the date() function to format the timestamp into the desired date format. When storing the date in a database, make sure to use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection attacks. 

// Example of converting and storing a date value in PHP

$dateString = "2022-01-15";
$timestamp = strtotime($dateString);
$formattedDate = date("Y-m-d", $timestamp);

// Assuming $conn is your database connection
$stmt = $conn->prepare("INSERT INTO table_name (date_column) VALUES (?)");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $formattedDate);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

PHP DATE data type date conversion database storage error handling

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