What are the potential pitfalls of storing dates as Unix Timestamps in PHP and MySQL databases?

Storing dates as Unix Timestamps in PHP and MySQL databases can lead to potential pitfalls when dealing with time zone conversions and daylight saving time changes. To avoid these issues, it's recommended to store dates in the database as DATETIME data type, which includes both date and time information. 

// Storing dates in the database using DATETIME data type
$date = new DateTime('2022-01-01 12:00:00', new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
$datetime = $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

// Inserting the date into the database
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (datetime_column) VALUES ('$datetime')";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

Keywords

Unix Timestamps PHP MySQL date conversion timezone offsets

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