Question

Hey, I am using DATETIME for my column for my database. I am trying to find the best way to format this date held in the row using PHP. I tried using date() but that would just print the current date. My row looks something like:

$row['date_added'] 

Any ideas?

Answer 1

A couple options.

1. Use MySQL’s DATE_FORMAT function to format it.
2. Use MySQL’s UNIX_TIMESTAMP function to get a timestamp PHP’s date() function can play with.
3. Run the MySQL DATETIME through PHP’s strtotime() function to get a timestamp PHP’s date() function can play with.

As an example of #3:

print date('<format string>', strtotime($row['date_added'])); 

Just follow the documentation on date() to construct a format string to your liking and swap it in.