php - What format does the default timestamps (create_at and updated_at) in laravel have when saved to db?

I am about to save an additional timestamp to db: last_sent

I want to save it in the same way as the default timestamps (created_at and updated_at) - meaning that I am going to migrate it like so:

$table->timestamp('last_sent')->nullable (It will be null sometimes..)

My question is what format on the time value should I save to this column?

I found two options but am not sure what is correct:

Carbon\Carbon::now()->toDateTimeString();

or just

Carbon\Carbon::now();

What is the correct way to save the date and time to get it like default timestamps?

Solution:

i think this is a Mysql matter ...

according to mysqltutorial

The MySQL TIMESTAMP is a temporal data type that holds the combination of date and time. The format of a TIMESTAMP is YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS which is fixed at 19 characters.

so, the default is YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

and this is how time Stamp stored in db ...

and if you find out what $table->timestamps(); do it 's :

public function timestamps($precision = 0)
{
    $this->timestamp('created_at', $precision)->nullable();

    $this->timestamp('updated_at', $precision)->nullable();
}

so: laravel keep Mysql format with precision=0 by default if you want to store your column like default laravel time stamp you could:

$this->timestamp('last_sent',0)->nullable();

you can ignore second parameter

for values to your column:

Carbon\Carbon::now()->toDateTimeString(); 

this won't do it because it's simple a string not a date

but this will be enough:

$value=Carbon\Carbon::now();

in spite of that $value will hold four number for milliseconds those number will be ignored in db because of the (0 precision) in our migration ...

Solution:

Normally, it is in YYYY-MM-DD Hour:Min:Sec format. To make you clear, I will add a screenshot for this.