How to get the current date and time using MySQL's NOW function

How to use MySQL's NOW function to get the current date and time

MySQL is a popular relational database management system that is widely used in various applications. In many cases, we need to get the current date and time to perform database operations. MySQL's NOW function is a very useful function that can help us get the current date and time easily.

The NOW function is a built-in function provided by MySQL for obtaining the current date and time. Its syntax is very simple, just use NOW() in the query statement. The following is an example of using the NOW function to obtain the current date and time:

SELECT NOW();

Run the above query statement to obtain the current date and time. The result returned by MySQL is a timestamp format containing date and time. For example, the returned result may be "2021-11-24 15:30:00".

In practical applications, we may need to store the current date and time into a database table. Here is an example that demonstrates how to use the NOW function to insert the current date and time into a table named "my_table":

INSERT INTO my_table (datetime_column) VALUES (NOW());

In the above example, "my_table" is a table in the database, It contains a column called "datetime_column". By using the NOW function, we can insert the current date and time into the "datetime_column" column.

In addition, we can also use the NOW function with other MySQL functions to achieve more functions. For example, we can use the NOW function in conjunction with the DATE function and TIME function to get the current date and time respectively. The following is an example:

SELECT CURDATE(), CURTIME();

Run the above query statement, MySQL will return the current date and time respectively. If we want to get only part of date or time, we can use DATE function or TIME function.

In addition to using the NOW function directly, we can also use aliases in query statements to improve the readability of the code. Here is an example:

SELECT NOW() AS current_datetime;

In the above example, we defined an alias "current_datetime" for the result of the NOW function. In this way, we can use this alias to refer to the current date and time in subsequent code.

To summarize, you can easily get the current date and time using MySQL's NOW function. Whether you are simply getting the current date and time or storing them into a database table, the NOW function is very useful. By combining the use of other MySQL functions, we can further extend the functionality of the NOW function to meet our needs. I hope this article can help you better understand and use MySQL's NOW function.

The above is the detailed content of How to get the current date and time using MySQL's NOW function. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!