Date from an form into a php script to enter into a mysql database

There's a lot of ways to do this, but I think probably the easiest method would be to use a datetime field in mySQL and the PHP DateTime object:

To get the date into the database: <?PHP

// Receive data from the webpage, and get it into mysql database. $objDate = new DateTime($_POST['the_date']); // create DateTime object with the POSTed data $formatted_date = date_format($my_date, 'Y-m-d h:i:s'); //formats date into mySQL Datetime field format

// field "the_date" should be a datetime field $sql = "insert into table (the_date) values ('$formatted_date')";

mysql_query($sql, $conn); //execute the sql to create the record; could also use mysqli ?>

To retrieve the date from the database: <?PHP

//Retrieve date from database and format it for display

$sql="select the_date from table where id=1";

$result = mysql_query($sql); //query the database $row = mysql_fetch_object($result); // convert the response to an object

$the_date = new DateTime($row->the_date); Create a new DateTime object from the field returned by the sql query

//Now you can use date_format to put the date into the format you prefer: echo date_format($the_date,"l F jS, Y"); // returns something like "Monday, July 7, 2014"

?>