What is the correct format to pass to the date()
function in PHP if I want to insert the result into a MySQL datetime
type column?
I've been trying date('Y-M-D G:i:s')
but that just inserts "0000-00-00 00:00:00" everytime.
What is the correct format to pass to the date()
function in PHP if I want to insert the result into a MySQL datetime
type column?
I've been trying date('Y-M-D G:i:s')
but that just inserts "0000-00-00 00:00:00" everytime.
The problem is that you're using 'M'
and 'D'
, which are a textual representations, MySQL is expecting a numeric representation of the format 2010-02-06 19:30:13
Try: date('Y-m-d H:i:s')
which uses the numeric equivalents.
edit: switched G
to H
, though it may not have impact, you probably want to use 24-hour format with leading 0s.
From the comments of php's date()
manual page:
<?php $mysqltime = date ('Y-m-d H:i:s', $phptime); ?>
You had the 'Y' correct - that's a full year, but 'M' is a three character month, while 'm' is a two digit month. Same issue with 'D' instead of 'd'. 'G' is a 1 or 2 digit hour, where 'H' always has a leading 0 when needed.
Here's an alternative solution: if you have the date in PHP as a timestamp, bypass handling it with PHP and let the DB take care of transforming it by using the FROM_UNIXTIME
function.
mysql> insert into a_table values(FROM_UNIXTIME(1231634282));
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from a_table;
+---------------------+
| a_date |
+---------------------+
| 2009-01-10 18:38:02 |
+---------------------+
I use this function (PHP 7)
function getDateForDatabase(string $date): string {
$timestamp = strtotime($date);
$date_formated = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $timestamp);
return $date_formated;
}
Older versions of PHP (PHP < 7)
function getDateForDatabase($date) {
$timestamp = strtotime($date);
$date_formated = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $timestamp);
return $date_formated;
}
This has been driving me mad looking for a simple answer. Finally I made this function that seems to catch all input and give a good SQL string that is correct or at least valid and checkable. If it's 1999-12-31 it's probably wrong but won't throw a bad error in MySQL.
function MakeSQLDate($date) {
if (is_null($date)) {
//use 1999-12-31 as a valid date or as an alert
return date('Y-m-d', strtotime('1999-12-31'));
}
if (($t = strtotime($date)) === false) {
//use 1999-12-31 as a valid date or as an alert
return date('Y-m-d', strtotime('1999-12-31'));
} else {
return date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime($date));
}
}
This is a more accurate way to do it. It places decimals behind the seconds giving more precision.
$now = date('Y-m-d\TH:i:s.uP', time());
Notice the .uP
.
More info: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6153162/8662476
A small addendum to accepted answer: If database datetime
is stored as UTC (what I always do), you should use gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s')
instead of date("Y-m-d H:i:s")
.
Or, if you prefer to let MySQL handle everything, as some answers suggest, I would insert MySQL's UTC_TIMESTAMP
, with the same result.
Note: I understood the question referring to current time.