I am using the NOW() function to store date in the database. But when i check the values in the database, the date is something else.
$sql="INSERT INTO feedback_comments
(posted_by, email, comments_text, comment_date)
VALUES
('$postedBy','$emailID','$message',NOW())";
Is it always off by the same amount? If so, it's likely to be either a configuration difference in times between your database and PHP environment, or even two different times if they're running on separate boxes.
The other possibility is that the type of the column you're inserting in to is not correct. In that case, you'll probably get something like 20071215235026.000000 instead of '2007-12-15 23:50:26'.
You can use current timestamp as the field type so with out insertion it will record the date time
Related
Assume that your webserver is detached from your database server. Their clocks might not be properly synchronized (down to milliseconds etc.).
You perform an insert such as "INSERT INTO sometable (VALUE,VALUE2,DATETIME) VALUES ("something","something else",NOW());"
Is there any way to get the timestamp generated by MySQL back into PHP? In the same fashion as when using $sqlObject->insert_id to get the AUTO_INCREMENT value of the last inserted row.
Edit:
I realize I could just use the insert_id and run a SELECT to get the timestamp, but this would require that I run another statement. I am wondering if it is possible in a single statement.
You can not get the direct value but you can do it via 2 ways.
1) Make a select query like select now() as cur_time. and take its value and use in the 2nd query. [ Its possible that you might get different time for this solution, SO i will suggest not to go with this solution and better you go with option 2. ]
2) After inserting the data get its ID and and make a query and get the inserted date time.
If your PHP and MYSQL server date time are same then you may use php's date function to get the current date / time .
I'm having some troubles dealing with Timestamp data type in MySQL.
I'm saving simple records in my database using a simple DB structure, like:
ID int
Name varchar
Date timestamp
Text varchar
And then retrieve them with something like:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE Date BETWEEN '2013-01-01' AND '2013-06-30'
Everything works fine if I store records letting MySQL fill the Date field with the actual timestamp, for example: 2013-10-04 22:40:02 which means I don't add any value to the Date field in my INSERT query.
But I need to be able to add the date by my self since my application needs to store the date from where the application started, and not the date and time in which the query was sent to the database.
So what I do is I create the same date/time format my Date field uses which is 2013-10-04 22:40:02 and then do a simply insert:
INSERT INTO table (Name, Date, Text)
VALUES ('Peter', '2013-10-04 22:40:02', 'Hello...')
Now, doing it this way I'm unable to bring any result by date using a select query like this one:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE Date BETWEEN '2013-01-01' AND '2013-11-30'
Even if I try to sort results by Date using PHPMyAdmin interface, all the records that contain manually added dates disappear. If I sort them by ID, they re-appear. I checked and the dates and formats are correct. So I have no idea what the problem could be. I'm new at MySQL by the way.
Hope you can give me a hand. Thanks!
Well, I think I found the problem and it has nothing to do with PHP and MySQL, the problem is that I generate the date with JavaScript, and it's giving the wrong month.. :/
Thanks to everyone anyway!
It seems like there are too many complicated ways of doing this, so I'm looking for a clean, succinct answer to this issue.
I write a blog, I click submit, and the title, content, and timestamp INSERTS INTO my blog table. Later, the blog is displayed on the blogindex.php page with the date formatted as MM-DD-YYYY.
So this is my 3 step question:
What is the best column type to insert the date into? (ex: INT, VARCHAR, etc)
What is the best INSERT INTO command to use? (ex: NOW(), CURDATE(), etc)
When I query the table and retrieve this data in an array, what is the best way to echo it?
I'm new at PHP/MySQL, so forgive me if I don't know the lingo and am too frustrated reading 1000 differing opinions of this topic that do not address my issue specifically, or only cover one of the 3 questions...
Here is my opinion on your three questions:
Use the correct data type: Date or DateTime. I would choose for the DateTime type as you store the time as well (might be very handy if you want to have some kind of order, when you added the posts).
It all depends whether you just want the Date (use CURDATE()) or the Date + Time (use NOW()).
You fetch the data and format it how you want it. Don't format it yet in the query, just use the correct PHP functions for it (for example with DateTime). How you fetch the data, doesn't matter too much; you can use PDO or MySQLi or ...
Always store and process dates and times in UTC and perform timezone adjustments in your presentation layer - it considerably simplifies things in the long-term.
MySQL provides a number of different types for working with dates and times, but the only one you need to worry about is DATETIME (the DATE type does not store time information, which messes up time zone conversion as information is lost, and the TIMESTAMP type performs automatic UTC conversion (which can mess up programs if the system time zone information is changed) and has a smaller range (1970-2038).
The CURDATE() function returns only the current date and excludes time information, however this returns information in the local timezone, which can change. Avoid this. The NOW() function is an improvement, but again, returns data in the current time zone.
Because you'll want to keep everything in UTC you'll actually want to use the UTC_TIMESTAMP function.
To return the value you'll need to execute SQL commands in sequence with variables, like so:
SET #now = UTC_TIMESTAMP()
INSERT INTO myTable ( utcDateTimeCreatedOrSomething ) VALUES ( #now )
SELECT #now
Date would probably be the best type, although datetime will work as record more accurate as well.
There isn't a 'best insert into', but what do you really want and how accurate you want the date to be. For a blog, I would say make it datetime and use NOW(). so visitors can see quite accurate of when this post is made.
surely you can easily find huge to run sql and fetch a select query from sql using php by google, so I'll leave this easy work to your self.
For echo the date, you can use the php date format such as:
$today = date("m-d-y"); // 03-10-01
I think Styxxy has it pretty well right, but here is a links for your PHP date formatting part...
How to format datetime most easily in PHP?
(Supporting link: http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.format.php )
Basically it's
echo date("d/m/Y", strtotime('2009-12-09 13:32:15'))
... although, I think the strtotime is unnecessary as it should already have the type of datetime.
In terms of the MySQL, yes, do it as a datetime col, use NOW() as the SQL keyword, and depending on how you want to get it from the database you could...
SELECT CAST(col_name AS DATE) .... or .... SELECT CAST(col_name AS DATETIME) <-- this last one is implied due to the col type.
good luck! :)
I'm using a mysql_query() in PHP to insert a value into a table in a database. One of the attributes of that table is "timestamp" which is supposed to be the current time that the query was made. How can I generate this? I tried using "time()" in PHP, but this is not inserting correctly in the query. When I insert what the time() function generates, it shows up as a default in my table, as: "0000-00-00 00:00:00". How can I generate the current time in order to input it into my table?
In your query, you need to set the value of that field to NOW() which is MySQL's function for getting a timestamp of the current time.
If you put your actual query in your question, I can help you with a more specific answer ;)
insert into table (datetime_field) values (now())
php function time() returns a unix timestamp that it's an integer value.
Go to php.net and view the codes for getting date and time and check whether you typed the codes correctly. If you did, then check if the format you are using in your code is similar to the one you are using in your table.
I'll explain my goal first: I want the user to query the database, and return rows only if those rows have been updated since their last query. No sense returning data they'd already have. So I created a column called 'lastupdated', a timestamp type which autoupdates every time any content in the row is updated. This works fine. Now, I want to form the query correctly. The user will have their previous query's timestamp saved, and via php will use it to compare their previous query's time with the time each row has been updated. If the row was updated after their last query, the row should be returned.
I made something like this,
SELECT * FROM users WHERE '2011-02-26 01:50:30' <= lastupdated
but its obviously much too simple. I checked the MySQL manual and found this page MySQL Time/Date Page. I'm sure the answer is here, but I've read through it any nothing really makes sense. I have a timestamp in the same format used by the MySQL timestamp type, but I don't know how I will compare them. Thank you very much for your help.
That query is exactly how you'd do it. As long as a stringified date-time is in MySQL's preferred format (yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss), then it will be internally converted into a datetime value, and the comparisons will go ahead.
You'd only need the date/time functions you found if you want to do something more complicated than simple "greater/less than/equal" type comparison, e.g. "any records that have a December timestamp".
As Marc said, your code should work. But you probably want to do this programmatically with a variable for the time instead of the literal.
If you don't have the date-time specified as a string, but rather as a timestamp (e.g. from using the php time() function), then you can use the following query:
$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE FROM_UNIXTIME(" . $timestamp . ") <= lastupdated";
The key is the FROM_UNIXTIME() MySQL function.