What are the potential pitfalls of storing multiple dates in a single VARCHAR field in PHP MySQL tables?

Storing multiple dates in a single VARCHAR field in PHP MySQL tables can make it difficult to query and manipulate the data efficiently. It can lead to issues with sorting, filtering, and performing date calculations. To avoid these pitfalls, it is recommended to store dates in separate date fields in the database. 

// Example of creating a table with separate date fields in MySQL
$sql = "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS events (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    event_name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    event_date DATE NOT NULL
)";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

if($result) {
    echo "Table created successfully";
} else {
    echo "Error creating table: " . mysqli_error($conn);
}

Keywords

PHP MySQL VARCHAR date data normalization

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