Storing a value as a date

[coolgamer48]

Hey, if I want to keep track of when a user signs up for a site, how would I translate the current date into a value SQL can understand (I'm using php btw). I already have a table with a value called date_est, and the datatype is date, but I don't know what SQL defines as a date? Does it want it in mm/dd/yyyy form or something?

[shiftJIS]

Assuming you're using MySQL...The documentation is your friend: ( http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/datetime.html )Of course, make sure you're reading the version that applies to the one being run on your server, although I can't think of any changes between the newer ones of the top of my head.In short, there are a LOT of formats you can use, and MySQL will interpret it based on context and even strip off extra data (like hour/minutes/seconds which don't get stored in DATE) automagically. You can even use date-time functions supported by MySQL ( http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/dat...ml#function_now ) directly in your queries so you don't have to mess with this stuff (ex. "UPDATE table_foo SET date_est=NOW() WHERE foo=1;")