Using PHP to insert/output dates and time in mysql?

I don't know why it is so confusing, maybe it s because there are so many ways to output/input date and time with mysql and php. All I 开发者_如何学JAVAwant is for users to put a date in this format

MM/DD/YYYY 

and for it to output in this format

Month Name - Date

and for time, I want users to pick the time from a select field, starting with 1:00 P.M. and incrementing down 30 minutes, so it will be 1:30 P.M., 2:00 P.M... and I want to somehow insert this into MySQL and output it as 1:30 P.M. Not sure how to do that either.

The best way to store a date format in a database and be able to display it the way you want is to use the time() and date() function.

when storing the date in your database you should use time(), it will generate a string like this -> 1300695900. this little string contains the date and time

then you can use date to display it in any way you want:

$time = time();//you would normally get this from the database
date('d M Y', $time); //outputs 21 Mar 2011
date('m-d-y', $time); // outpus 03-21-2011

and so on...

Edit: to answer your last question, you just get the different values, stick it together (concatenation) and then use strtotime()

$date = $_POST['date']; // eg 03/03/2011
$time = $_POST['time']; // eg 1:30
$daypart = $_POST['daypart']; // eg PM
$date_time = $date.' '.$time.' '.$daypart;
$strtime = strtotime($date_time);
echo date('d M Y - h:i', $strtime);// outputs 03 Mar 2011 - 01:30