Best way to store time (hh:mm) in a database

Question

I want to store times in a database table but only need to store the hours and minutes. I know I could just use DATETIME and ignore the other components of the date, but wha

Answer 1

If you are using MySQL use a field type of TIME and the associated functionality that comes with TIME.

00:00:00 is standard unix time format.

If you ever have to look back and review the tables by hand, integers can be more confusing than an actual time stamp.