What are the best practices for formatting and handling dates in PHP when querying a database?

When querying a database in PHP, it's important to properly format and handle dates to ensure accurate results. One common issue is mismatched date formats between PHP and the database, leading to incorrect queries or errors. To solve this, always use the same date format in both PHP and the database, and consider using PHP's date() and strtotime() functions to convert dates as needed. 

// Example of querying a database with properly formatted dates
$date = date('Y-m-d'); // Format date as YYYY-MM-DD
$query = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE date_column = '$date'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Example of converting date format using strtotime()
$date = '2022-01-01'; // Date in YYYY-MM-DD format
$new_date = date('m/d/Y', strtotime($date)); // Convert to MM/DD/YYYY format
$query = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE date_column = '$new_date'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

Keywords

PHP date formatting database querying datetime functions error handling

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