PHP - Date What format

[GrumpyYoungMan]

What is the best method for handling and storing date(s)

YYYY-MM-DD or Unix timestamps?

I used to use the Unix timestamps, but I was lead to believe I shouldn't now but it seems I have to always convert to the Unix time stamps when handling the date format?

[Jason Knight]

For what? What are you handling or storing them IN?

Much like with JavaScript the 'native format" you use shouldn't matter if you're manipulating them, as the first thing you should be doing is assigning it to a DateTime object which can do all your juggling and manipulation for you:

https://www.php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php

[GrumpyYoungMan]

I’ll have a look, Thanks Jason.

I was mainly using date for things like added, updated and anniversary dates in MySQL...?

[GrumpyYoungMan]

For what? What are you handling or storing them IN?

Much like with JavaScript the 'native format" you use shouldn't matter if you're manipulating them, as the first thing you should be doing is assigning it to a DateTime object which can do all your juggling and manipulation for you:

https://www.php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php

Does that also mean we should stop using date now?

[Jason Knight]

I was mainly using date for things like added, updated and anniversary dates in MySQL...?

Since MySQL has it's own date type, a lot of those -- like if you want "right now" -- you should be using NOW() in your SQL with a date field.

UPDATE someTable
updated = NOW()
WHERE id = ?

For example. Unless you're doing date math -- and even then -- dates aren't even your PHP's job when dealing with mysql apart from turning form input into something compatible with mysql dates, or turning the date from mysql into markup formatting... which is when the normal "date" function is fine and dandy.

But like anniversaries, you want to add a year, do it in the query. You want to pull something that happened on the same day and month, use DAY() and MONTH() or DAYOFMONTH() in the query.

[GrumpyYoungMan]

Thanks again Jason, I was already using NOW() for the insert and update date.

I wasn’t aware of the other date functions...

I will have a look and post some code samples for you to pass comment on... I’m sure it’ll most likely be bad but that’s all part of the learning process...

[GrumpyYoungMan]

Code: [Select]

date("F dS Y", strtotime($r['expiry']));
So is the above code updated to:

Code: [Select]

date_format( date_create($r['date_added']), 'F dS Y');
when using PHP version 7 >

[Jason Knight]

BOTH are valid approaches, when doing simple time conversions there's still nothing wrong with Date. In fact I would argue AGAINST using the wasteful "procedural wrappers" for DateTime just as I would for mysqli.

If I were to do that now, I'd do:

Code: [Select]

(new DateTime($r['expiry']))->format('F dS Y')
Depending on what you're doing I might store that DateTime in a variable. DateTime is nice as it has a slew of methods you can use, AND a bunch of RFC date formats predeclared inside it.

https://www.php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php

So for example if you need the format a cookie uses and the RFC that the <time> tag expects on its datetime attribute? You can:

Code: [Select]

$date = new DateTime($row['expiry']);

$cookieDate = $date->format(DateTime::COOKIE);
$dateTime = $date->format(DateTime::RFC3339);

The fun part is those DateTimeInterface static properties? You can use them with the old date functions too.