CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysql
Jmilez
Jmilez

Reputation: 3

Timestamp, Date, Time, or DateTime which is which?

I know that this is longed asked question but still I can't find an answer.

I have a fix time in and out in my database. Also I have date_in and date_out in separate columns. All the data in my database come from csv which is in that exact format. Can I concatenate (time_in and date_in) and (time_out and date_out) and put them in a designated column which is in timestamp format?

I'm making a import and export of csv in which those info below is concern. So far I can export it but my import doesn't work well. I use the phpmyadmin csv load data to import. Can't get my head in importation of dates and times coz other data mess up in my database.

Note: total_hrs is not included in the csv which means that it is already in my database. And it doesn't have a value so basicaly I will provide values for that in my script.

Example:

id | time_in | time_out |   date_in   |   date_out  |  total_hrs
 1 | 9:30pm  | 7:30am   | 2013-12-01  |  2013-13-01 |     ?

This should have a 10 hours elapsed time.

So basically it also has a different date. I'm confused whether I need to convert the time in timestamps or something similar to get the time difference or I also need to have the date as well to be a basis in getting the difference between the two time??Any suggestions.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 86

Answers (3)

michi
michi

Reputation: 6625

use timestamps in mysql:

INSERT INTO tblTimes (timein) VALUES (NOW());
UPDATE tblTimes SET timeout = NOW() WHERE id=$someid;

to compare, see https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_timediff

Upvotes: 0

Michael
Michael

Reputation: 629

If you have the date you should use timestamps. They're easier to compare.

Upvotes: 0

Piotr Jaszkowski
Piotr Jaszkowski

Reputation: 1178

It could be also 34, 58,.. hours. I advise you to store timestamps, if you will need pretty display of it you can just use print (or smth similiar) function in MySql.

Upvotes: 1

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