default date of today for table

[Anonymous]

Sorry if this has already been asked at one point, but I didn't see anything when I searched for it.

I created a table with a date field. How do I give that date field a default date of today when a record is created? I want to do this as a default value rather then having to pass it in when I populate the table.

thanks

 

[gesf]

With DATE type you must use mysql NOW() function!
Doing something like this (example):

mysql> CREATE TABLE test (mydate DATE);
mysql> INSERT INTO test SET mydate=NOW();

Please read this:
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/DATETIME.html

 

[Anonymous]

mysql> CREATE TABLE test (mydate DATE);
mysql> INSERT INTO test SET mydate=NOW();

Shouldn't that be:

INSERT INTO test (..., date, ...) VALUES (..., NOW(), ...);

 

[gesf]

Actually it works both ways!
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/INSERT.html

 

[Anonymous]

Oh, my bad. Good catch. :-D

 

[Anonymous]

Good deal. Thanks for the reply's.

I figured I would have to do it with the insert or update and pass it in as a field value, which I knew how to do. I mainly wanted a date field with a default date value of the current date so I wouldn't have to pass one in when creating/updating the record.

I found that if using the date or time field types, you can only have constant default values, so I can't use a time function as the default. I did find, and ended up using, the TIMESTAMP field type. If you have a column of type TIMESTAMP and then do not pass in a value, it will get assigned the current system time/date. This is mainly what I wanted, and it seems to work good.

Thanks
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/DATETIME.html

 

[Anonymous]

I did find, and ended up using, the TIMESTAMP field type. If you have a column of type TIMESTAMP and then do not pass in a value, it will get assigned the current system time/date.

Ack, how did I forget that? Good find.

 

[Anonymous]

the way that i do it is i make a hidden form field with the name of "date" and the value of a phpdate line. then in my query i do $_POST['date'].

ahem...

<input type="hidden" name="date" value="<?echo date("F j, Y, g:i a");?>">

that date shows up Month DD YYYY 00:00 AM. and the obvious....

INSERT INTO "table" (date) VALUES ('".$_POST['date']."');

D$ in full effect

 

[gesf]

Yeh, for a formated date and time. It´s a nice idea!
This is another way:

<?
$datetime = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
mysql_query("INSERT INTO table (date) VALUES ($datetime);");
?>