How does mysql store dates

It will throw an error as is good and proper. Which means you need to code against that potential, and you need to guarantee that anyone else who ever codes against the database does the same. You are creating either potential issues or more work for yourself. Usually both.

In addition, depending on the maximum length of your VARCHAR, you can get string truncation errors, or bad data if you suppress those errors. This is mentioned in other answers but bears repeating. There are many functions that deal with DATE data types.

Adding a certain amount of time. Determining the difference. Converting to other date formats. Which is both extra cycles, and something you need to remember every time you you need to manipulate your date. Also, one last thing I want to add. You should not ever design your database based on the programming language you are using to access it.

You should design your database based on what your data is and proper database design standards. You might switch to Ruby or Typescript next week.

Or someone else may need to access the data who doesn't use PHP. A good data structure will serve you far better then changing your data to meet a language or library's quirks. You can of course do whatever you want. But there are reasons for having the data types for dates and time and using them. Most important to me is that a web application may have simultaneous users expecting different representations.

Personally, I like , some like January 10, There will be a need for conversion routines for what the actual user expects. This is messy but is helped by the standard routines available for the date type. The area is sometimes called I18N, shortening the 18 characters in Internationalization and is a well-known drawer filled with issues.

Take the following string: "". What date does that refer to? December 1, ? January 2, ? Something else? This really depends on what part of the world you're living in. For example, we can create a new table called orders that contains order number, order item, order date and order delivery columns as follows:. For the delivery date it will be impossible to predict the exact time of day the package will arrive, so we just want to record the date. Whilst it is most common to store dates using a dash - as the delimiter and a colon : as the time delimiter it is in fact possible to use any character, or no character between the date and time segments.

For example, the following formats all achieve the same result:. In addition to providing mechanisms for storing dates and times, MySQL also provides a wide range of functions that can be used to manipulate dates and times.

The following table provides a list of the more common functions available for working with times and dates in MySQL:. A useful point to note about these functions is that you can easily experiment without writing any data to a table.

If you try to enter a date in a format other than the Year-Month-Day format, it might work but it won't be storing the dates as you expect.

Also, there is a statement that allows you to set only the YEAR of an event. Now let's check how the YEAR statement works in a query. MultiLineString Class. Supported Spatial Data Formats. Geometry Well-Formedness and Validity. Spatial Reference System Support. Creating Spatial Columns.

Populating Spatial Columns. Optimizing Spatial Analysis. Creating Spatial Indexes. Data Type Storage Requirements. Choosing the Right Type for a Column. InnoDB Cluster. InnoDB ReplicaSet.