Yep, MySQL has DATE, DATETIME, and TIMESTAMP field types. You can order by them and everything.
-Steve On Thursday, October 25, 2001, at 09:18 AM, Tim Foster wrote: > I'm new to this list, to PHP and to MySQL (been doing VBScript on ASP > for several years, > tho). > > I'm curious... > > If you're going to store it as an integer, why not store "10/24/2001" > as YYYYMMDD > (20011024). This gives you the added benefit of being able to have the > db sort your > fields. This even works if you want to include the time with your date > (provided all dates > in the field consistently contain the same *amount* of info). For > example, noon on > Christmas will always be lower than noon of the following New Year ..as > it should be: > > YYYY/MM/DD 20011225 < 20020101 > YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM 200112251200 < 200201011200 > YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS 20011225120000 < 20020101120000 > > I'm betting there's no easy way to sort it if you store it as MM/DD/YY > > MM/DD/YYYY 10242001 < 12252001 (good) > ..but NOT less than the following New Year's > MM/DD/YYYY 10242001 > 01012002 (bad) > > Granted, you might take up a bit more space in the DB, which would have > a tiny impact on > performance(??), but an extra $100 on the hard drive would effectively > eliminate any > reasonable space considerations and (IMHO) reduce the amount of > programming/debugging to > more than justify the overhead. > > FWIW, M$ likes to store their dates as two integers: one to hold the > date portion, the > other to hold the hours:minutes:seconds portion. > > If there's something about PHP/MySQL that makes this point moot, please > let me know. > > TIM > -He who always plows a straight furrow is in a rut. > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Mike Frazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 7:54 AM >> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] PHP and MySQL queries... >> >> >> Agreed. This is especially useful when you need to conserve every >> byte you >> can; a timestamp of "10/24/2001" or something similar is going to take >> 10 >> bytes as a string and an indeterminate number of bytes for an actual >> timestamp because of system variations, whereas an integer value of >> 10242001 >> will take you 2-4 bytes depending on the type of int you declare. Not >> a lot >> of space, but assume for a second you have 30 fields in your database >> and 5 >> million rows...suddenly those 6-8 bytes have multiplied on this one >> field >> alone. Space and speed are important in DBs :) >> >> Mike Frazer > > > -- > PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
