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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-14T05:01:42+00:00

Let’s say you’ve got a table with a timestamp column, and you want to

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Let’s say you’ve got a table with a timestamp column, and you want to parse that column into two arrays – $date and $time.

Do you, personally:

a) query like this DATE(timestamp), TIME(timestamp) , or perhaps even going as far as HOUR(timestamp), MINUTE(timestamp

b) grab the timestamp column and parse it out as needed with a loop in PHP

I feel like (a) is easier… but I know that I don’t know anything. And it feels a little naughty to make my query hit the same column 2 or 3 times for output…

Is there a best-practice for this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    (a) is probably fine, if it is easier for your code base. I am a big fan of not having to write extra code that is not needed and I love only optimizing when necessary. To me pulling the whole date and then parsing seems like premature optimization.

    Always remember that sql servers have a whole lot of smarts in them for optimizing queries so you don’t have to.

    So go with a), if you find it is dog slow or cause problems, then go to b). I suspect that a) will do all you want and you will never think about it again.

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