What are the potential pitfalls of manipulating the creation date of entries in a database query for sorting purposes in PHP?

Manipulating the creation date of entries in a database query for sorting purposes can lead to inaccurate data representation and potential confusion for users. It is better to use a separate column for sorting purposes, such as a timestamp or an integer representing the order of entries. 

// Example of sorting entries by a separate column 'order_id' instead of manipulating creation date
$query = "SELECT * FROM entries ORDER BY order_id ASC";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Fetch and display the sorted entries
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo $row['entry_title'] . "<br>";
}

Keywords

database query creation date sorting manipulation PHP

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