How To Quote Date and Time Values in SQL Statements? - MySQL FAQs - Managing Tables and Running Queries with PHP Scripts

If you want to provide date and time values in a SQL statement, you should write them in the format of "yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss", and quoted with single quotes ('). The tutorial exercise below shows you two INSERT statements. The first one uses a hard-code date value. The second one uses the date() function to return a date value.

<?php
  include "mysql_connection.php";

  $notes = "Added long time ago!";
  $time = "1999-01-01 01:02:03";
  $sql = "INSERT INTO fyi_links (id, url, notes, time)" 
      . " VALUES ("
      . " 301, 'netscape.com', '".$notes."', '".$time."')";
  if (mysql_query($sql, $con)) {
    print(mysql_affected_rows() . " rows inserted.\n");
  } else {
    print("SQL statement failed.\n");
  }

  $notes = "Added today!";
  $time = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
  $sql = "INSERT INTO fyi_links (id, url, notes, time)"
      . " VALUES ("
      . " 302, 'myspace.com', '".$notes."', '".$time."')";
  if (mysql_query($sql, $con)) {
    print(mysql_affected_rows() . " rows inserted.\n");
  } else {
    print("SQL statement failed.\n");
  }

  mysql_close($con); 
?>

If you run this script, you will get something like this:

1 rows inserted.
1 rows inserted.