Why php divides date instead of saving it as string?
Question by robert
I have a MySQL database table that has a VARCHAR field storing a date in dd/mm/yyyy format.
I have a situation where I need to extract that date to a variable and then save it in a different table (which has a different structure than the first one).
So I do this:
$result=mysql_query("select * from shares") or die(mysql_error());
$row=mysql_fetch_array($result);
$date_old=$row['last_update']; //date in dd/mm/yyyy format
Then when I try to insert $date_old into the other table, instead of inserting the date, PHP actually performs a mathematical division operation on it! So instead of saving 14/03/2012, it divides 14 by 3 and then by 2012 and stores 0.0023 in the database.
Surely there is a way to stop this from happening using a built-in function (without removing the slashes from the string and then putting them back in before insertion)?
Answer by Karoly Horvath
When doing insert put the values in single quotes: " ... last_update = '$date' ... ", otherwise mysql will do the calculations.
Note: for storing dates use the date type.
Answer by Starx
That is because, it turns out into an expression 14/03/2012
Escape the values using quotes.
$query = "INSERT INTO anothertable (data) VALUES('$olddate');";
