Creating a Sortable Time Stamp

 function timestamp($t = null) {   if ($t == null) {     $t = time();   }   return date('YmdHis', $t); } 

Sometimes, using date values with a database is not a clever thing. Different language versions of the database, its drivers, or the underlying operating system could cause some trouble when the regional date formats do not fit together.

Converting a Date into a (Sortable) Time Stamp (timestamp.php)

 <?php   function timestamp($t = null) {     if ($t == null) {       $t = time();     }     return date('YmdHis', $t);   }   echo 'Time stamp: ' . timestamp(time()); ?> 

A potential alternative is the use of time stamps. Several different formats are available, but most of them have the following structure: year-month-day-hours-minutes-seconds. Using this value order, the string representation of the date can be easily sorted, which allows using it in databases.

To create such a time stamp, just a special call to date() is required. In the preceding code, this is encapsulated in a function for easy reuse.

TIP

This format is also used by MySQL for the representation of its TIMESTAMP data type.