What best practices should be followed when generating and formatting date and time in PHP scripts?

When generating and formatting date and time in PHP scripts, it is important to set the correct timezone, use the date() function to format the date and time according to your needs, and handle any potential errors that may arise during the process.

// Set the timezone
date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');

// Get the current date and time in the desired format
$currentDateTime = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

// Handle any errors that may occur during the date and time generation
if($currentDateTime === false){
    echo "Error generating date and time.";
}