What potential pitfalls can arise when sorting dates in MySQL using PHP?

When sorting dates in MySQL using PHP, one potential pitfall is that the dates may not be stored in a format that MySQL recognizes as a date. To avoid this issue, it is important to ensure that the dates are stored in a MySQL-compatible format, such as YYYY-MM-DD. Additionally, when querying the dates in PHP, it is recommended to use the DATE_FORMAT function in MySQL to format the dates correctly for sorting. 

// Query to retrieve dates from MySQL in YYYY-MM-DD format
$query = "SELECT DATE_FORMAT(date_column, '%Y-%m-%d') AS formatted_date FROM table_name ORDER BY date_column";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

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

Keywords

MySQL PHP date sorting datetime timezone

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