Storing Unix timestamp.

[pcthug]

Hi, what would be the best method of storing a PHP generated Unix timestamp (from time() (http://au.php.net/manual/en/function.time.php))?
Thanks guys.

[chazzy]

well, what is the purpose? if the only purpose is to store the time of insertion, then it's better to let mysql use it's NOW() function and store the data in a datetime column, then on select format it as you want.

[NogDog]

If you do want to store the UNIX timestamp, store it as "INT UNSIGNED".

[pcthug]

Ok, so I have chose to use the SQL NOW() function and it stores time in the following format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. OK, that's fine, however on retrieval of this data is there a way of converting that into seconds only format via SQL or is it best handled with the PHP gmmktime() function?

[NogDog]

If using MySQL, you can use the UNIX_TIMESTAMP() function in your query.