Convert from MySQL datetime to another format with PHP

Question

I have a datetime column in MySQL.

How can I convert it to the display as mm/dd/yy H:M (AM/PM) using PHP?

Answer 1

To correctly format a DateTime object in PHP for storing in MySQL use the standardised format that MySQL uses, which is ISO 8601.

PHP has had this format stored as a constant since version 5.1.1, and I highly recommend using it rather than manually typing the string each time.

$dtNow = new DateTime();
$mysqlDateTime = $dtNow->format(DateTime::ISO8601);

This, and a list of other PHP DateTime constants are available at http://php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php#datetime.constants.types