<p>I'm interested in doing comparisons between the date string and the MySQL timestamp. However, I'm not seeing an easy conversion. Am I overlooking something obvious?</p>

Converting from timestamp to format:
```
```
date('Y-m-d', $timestamp);
```
```
Converting from formatted to timestamp:
```
```
mktime(0, 0, 0, $month, $day, $year, $is_dst);
```
```
See
date
and
mktime
for further documentation.
When it comes to storing it's up to you whether to use the MySQL DATE format for stroing as a formatted date; as an integer for storing as a UNIX timestamp; or you can use MySQL's TIMESTAMP format which converts a numeric timestamp into a readable format.
Check the MySQL Doc
for TIMESTAMP info.