Converting PHP Date to MySQL Format

When working with dates in PHP and MySQL, it's essential to format them correctly for proper insertion into the database.

The question arises: How can we convert a PHP date into the MySQL format of "YYYY-MM-DD"?

Assume we have a date field in PHP set as:

$date = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['intake_date']);

To convert this PHP date to MySQL format, consider the following:

If the MySQL column is of the DATE type:

$date = date('Y-m-d', strtotime(str_replace('-', '/', $date)));

If the MySQL column is of the DATETIME type:

$date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime(str_replace('-', '/', $date)));

It's important to note that strtotime() will not work with hyphen (-) separators. Therefore, it's necessary to replace the hyphens with slashes before using strtotime().

Alternatively, for the date format you provided, which includes time, you can also use this regular expression based approach:

$date = '02/07/2009 00:07:00';
$date = preg_replace('#(\d{2})/(\d{2})/(\d{4})\s(.*)#', '$3-$2-$1 $4', $date);
echo $date;

This will output the correct MySQL format of "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS".