What are the potential consequences of using VARCHAR instead of DATE for storing date information in a MySQL database when working with PHP?

Using VARCHAR instead of DATE for storing date information in a MySQL database can lead to data inconsistency, difficulty in sorting and querying data, and increased storage space usage. To solve this issue, it is recommended to store date information in the DATE datatype in MySQL. 

// Example of creating a table with DATE datatype for storing date information
$query = "CREATE TABLE my_table (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    event_date DATE
)";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);
if (!$result) {
    echo "Error creating table: " . mysqli_error($connection);
}

Keywords

VARCHAR DATE MySQL database PHP

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