Question

i have a table that looks like this:
Field: msg_sent_datetime
Type: datetime

yet when i use NOW() in a php mysql insert query it is staying as all zeros?

any idea why?

Answer 1

If you’re using it only at the time of INSERT, you could make the field a TIMESTAMP and set a default of CURRENT_TIMESTAMP.

Without knowing more about the code it’s difficult to suggest much else.

Example with CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

CREATE TABLE example (
    id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    msg TEXT,
    msg_sent_datetime TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

Also, if you want it to always update when there’s a change to the row, you can add the ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP property to the table definition:

CREATE TABLE example (
    id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    msg TEXT,
    msg_sent_datetime TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

Of course, all of this is totally dependent on switching to TIMESTAMP which you may not want