The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP

Chapter 17. SEARCHING RECORDS AND HANDLING DATES

We don't store information in a database simply for the fun of it. The idea of a database is to make it easy to find the precise information you want, when you want, and without the need to reorganize it constantly. To do this successfully, you need a good knowledge of SQL. It's a vast subject, so I'll only be able to scratch the surface by showing you some basic search techniques.

I'll also show you how to handle dates in PHP and MySQL. As you saw in Chapter 14, MySQL stores dates in the ISO format of YYYY-MM-DD. PHP takes a completely different approach, calculating dates by counting the number of seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970. It's not as complicated as it sounds, but you need to ensure ...