CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phptimestamp
ShadowZzz
ShadowZzz

Reputation: 415

PHP Saving and Reusing timestamps

I want to use timestamps.

I know that this outputs a timestamps:

$date = date_create();
echo date_format($date, 'U');

But I want to know how to make use of that time stamp. --> save it to a database, the later convert it to required timezone and then output it in the format that I choose.

I just don't know how to do that.

How can I use a time stamp?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 69

Answers (1)

peterm
peterm

Reputation: 92785

Since your intent is just to store and then show your timestamps you can let mysql do the job.

Your table DDL might look like

CREATE TABLE `posts` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `post_date` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  `post` varchar(512) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

Important part DEFAULTCURRENT_TIMESTAMP That way current timestamp will be assigned to post_date column on INSERT

INSERT INTO `posts` (`post`) VALUES ('post1');

Then you can use DATE_FORMAT to fetch formatted timestamp data from mysql

SELECT id, DATE_FORMAT(post_date, '%m/%d/%Y %H:%i:%s') post_date, post 
FROM `posts`

Output

+----+---------------------+-------+
| id | post_date           | post  |
+----+---------------------+-------+
|  1 | 02/20/2013 23:45:43 | post1 |
|  2 | 02/20/2013 23:45:43 | post2 |
+----+---------------------+-------+

But you if you want to format it in php you can use UNIX_TIMESTAMP() in your query first

SELECT id, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(post_date) post_date, post FROM `posts`

and then format it with date() like this, assuming that you fetched a row to $row by your favorite extension (PDO or mysqli)

date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');
echo date('m/d/Y H:i:s',$row['post_date']);

output

02/20/2013 23:45:43

Upvotes: 1

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