What are the best practices for securely storing and validating time-related data in PHP forms?

When storing and validating time-related data in PHP forms, it is important to use the appropriate data types and formats to ensure data integrity and security. It is recommended to store time-related data in a database using datetime or timestamp data types to accurately capture date and time information. When validating time input from forms, use PHP functions like strtotime() to convert input into a timestamp and then validate it against a specific format using date().

// Storing time-related data in a MySQL database using datetime data type
$timestamp = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime($_POST['time_input']));
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (time_column) VALUES ('$timestamp')";
// Execute query to store data in the database

// Validating time input from a form
$time_input = $_POST['time_input'];
$timestamp = strtotime($time_input);
if ($timestamp === false) {
    // Invalid time input
    echo "Invalid time format";
} else {
    $formatted_time = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $timestamp);
    // Use $formatted_time for further processing
}