Question

How to create TIMESTAMPS for SQL query for it to be sortable by date from PHP?

So I have table created by such SQL script

CREATE TABLE  `Keys` (
 `ID` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
 `KEY` INT NOT NULL ,
 `TIMESTAMP` DATE NOT NULL ,
UNIQUE (
`KEY`
)
)

What sript should I write to:

• Add timestamps
• To sort\search thru that timestamps

Answer 1

TIMESTAMP in MySQL will be returned to PHP as strings, in the YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format.

Which means you’ll be able to use strtotime on them, to get an UNIX Timestamp, which is the "standard type" on which PHP works for dates/times.

You’ll jsut have to consider that a timestamp is a number of seconds since 1970-01-01

Note there is a limit on [timestamps][3] *(quoting)* :

The TIMESTAMP data type has a range of
‘1970-01-01 00:00:01’ UTC to
‘2038-01-19 03:14:07’ UTC.

And that limit is generally the same on the PHP side.

Then, to manipulate those timestamps, on the SQL side, you can use a wide range of [Date and Time Functions][4].

And they can be sorted like any other data-type — you can also use the standard =, >, <, … operators.