Question

When I insert data into my MySQL database, a lot of the time I need to store the current datetime. I always want to store my datetimes as UTC time.

How do I store the current UTC time? Is there a built-in function or do I have to apply an offset to NOW()?

Answer 1

In MySQL you can use UNIX_TIMESTAMP() which can provide all kinds of Date and Time Values and specific to your request you can use UTC_TIMESTAMP, UTC_TIMESTAMP() which returns the current UTC date and time as a value in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.uuuuuu format, depending on whether the function is used in a string or numeric context.

Example:

mysql> SELECT UTC_TIMESTAMP(), UTC_TIMESTAMP() + 0;
        -> '2003-08-14 18:08:04', 20030814180804.000000

More Info is described here about MySQL Date/Time Functions:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_unix-timestamp