Unix Time Stamp

[dmccabe]

A couple of questions:

 

1) Is the unix timestamp the best to use when you may want to perform some calculations on a date/time field late on?

if so

2) How do I insert the time stamp in to my database? I know how to do the insert, but what function grabs the current time stamp?

 

Thanks in advance

[rhodesa]

I am still on the fence and switch back and forth between using datatype of DATETIME and INT in mysql. INT is how you would store the unix timestamp. I prefer timestamps cus they are timezone free and easier to do calculations on in PHP. But, with a DATETIME datatype you can do more calculations in the mysql query. And you can always convert it to a timestamp with the mysql function UNIX_TIMESTAMP(date)

 

....so choice is yours