What are the best practices for handling date/time values in PHP when interacting with a MySQL database?

When handling date/time values in PHP for interaction with a MySQL database, it is important to ensure that the date/time values are formatted correctly to avoid any issues with data insertion or retrieval. It is recommended to use the DateTime class in PHP to handle date/time values and format them according to MySQL's datetime format (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS). This ensures consistency and compatibility between PHP and MySQL date/time values. 

// Example of handling date/time values in PHP for MySQL interaction
$date = new DateTime('2022-01-01 12:00:00');
$formatted_date = $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

// Inserting the formatted date into a MySQL database
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (date_column) VALUES ('$formatted_date')";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Retrieving date/time values from MySQL database and formatting in PHP
$query = "SELECT date_column FROM table_name";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);
$row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result);
$mysql_date = $row['date_column'];
$php_date = new DateTime($mysql_date);
$formatted_php_date = $php_date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Keywords

DateTime MySQL timezone timestamp formatting

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