Tutorials - MySQL - Dates & Times

One of the most common data types you will need to store, after strings and integers, is dates and times. Knowing when things have happened is hugely important, so MySQL provides a number of different formats for storing dates and times, depending on the range and precision you need. Here's an overview of the types:

YEAR

Stores a year in the format YYYY, in the range 1901 to 2155.

DATE

Stores a date in the format YYYY-MM-DD, in the range 1000-01-01 to 9999-12-31.

DATETIME

Stores a date and time in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss, in the range 1000-01-01 00:00:00 to 9999-12-31 23:59:59.

TIMESTAMP

Stores a timestamp in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss, in the range 1970-01-01 00:00:00 to 2037-12-31 23:59:59. Although this date range appears to be the limit of 32-bit UNIX timestamps, the TIMESTAMP field in MySQL is not always stored as a UNIX timestamp, and is often undergoing revision (possibly to prepare for 64-bit UNIX timestamps). We would recommend using DATETIME unless you need fast indexing on your time columns.

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