What are some best practices for handling date formats and conversions in PHP to ensure accurate date comparisons and operations in SQLite databases?

When working with date formats and conversions in PHP for SQLite databases, it is important to ensure that dates are stored and retrieved in a consistent format to avoid inaccuracies in comparisons and operations. One best practice is to use the ISO 8601 date format (YYYY-MM-DD) for storing dates in SQLite databases, as it is universally recognized and sortable. When retrieving dates from the database, they should be converted to PHP DateTime objects for easy manipulation and comparison.

// Storing dates in SQLite database in ISO 8601 format
$date = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($inputDate));
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (date_column) VALUES ('$date')";
// Execute the query

// Retrieving dates from SQLite database and converting to DateTime object
$query = "SELECT date_column FROM table_name";
$result = $pdo->query($query);
while ($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
    $date = new DateTime($row['date_column']);
    // Perform date operations or comparisons
}