Wordpress timestamp format - why?

[Webnet]

What would be the reason for anyone to store a timestamp like: 2009-04-23 00:53:30 instead of a unix timestamp? It makes it unsearchable via SQL, or at least a lot harder. So why would they do this?

[guido2004]

Because it's MySQL's timestamp format: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/datetime.html

[Webnet]

:sigh: that's incredibly annoying. For it to be any good I have to use mktime.

[crmalibu]

No you don't. You can use php's strtotime() to convert to a timestamp. You can also do that in the sql query by using UNIX_TIMESTAMP(my_datetime_column). You can also do the formatting in sql with DATE_FORMAT()

This format generally makes it easier to search and manipulate in sql. You just need to familiarize yourself with the many date functions mysql provides.

[Webnet]

What's the advantage of storing it like that? Because it seems like to do any comparing an integer is by far the best way to store the data.

[logic_earth]

Using ISO 8601 as the time format has several distinct advantages. First ISO 8601 is not limited to a specific range like a Unix timestamp. min: 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z the max: 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z. ISO 8601 is also very human and computer readable.