What are the best practices for handling date formats in PHP when querying a database with date values stored as text?

When querying a database with date values stored as text in PHP, it is important to handle date formats properly to ensure accurate results. One way to do this is by using PHP's date() and strtotime() functions to convert the text date values into a standard format before performing any comparisons or calculations.

// Example code snippet for handling date formats in PHP when querying a database with date values stored as text

// Assuming $row is an array containing the database query results with a 'date' field storing date values as text

// Convert text date value to a standard format
$date = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($row['date']));

// Now you can use the $date variable for comparisons or calculations