What are the best practices for automatically filling creation/update dates in MySQL using PHP?

When working with MySQL databases in PHP, it is a common practice to automatically fill creation/update dates for records. This can be achieved by setting the default values for the creation/update date columns to the current timestamp in the database table definition. By doing this, whenever a new record is inserted or an existing record is updated, the creation/update dates will be automatically filled with the current timestamp. 

// Set the default values for creation/update dates in the MySQL table definition
CREATE TABLE example_table (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    data VARCHAR(255),
    created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
    updated_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

// Insert a new record into the table
INSERT INTO example_table (data) VALUES ('example data');

// Update an existing record in the table
UPDATE example_table SET data = 'updated data' WHERE id = 1;

Keywords

MySQL PHP automatic date filling creation date update date

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