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.
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