How to insert the current date and time into a PHP mySQL database?

I'm creating a blog website. When a user submits a new blog, I want the blog to be saved into my PHP database, along with the exact date and time that it was submitted.





For storing the date and time, I have a datetime field that is set to "not null". I've tried leaving that field blank when I'm processing a blog submission:





insert into blogs values '$title', 'body', ' ';


(notice the empty quotation marks)





but, when I do that, the field in the database is filled with zeros: 0000-00-00 00:00:00 . I'm using this field as my primary key, so I can't have them all filled with 0's!





How do I get the database to enter the current date and time? I've tried changing the field to a timestamp, but that didn't help.





I'm using PHP 5.|||$sql = "INSERT INTO blogs (column_name1, column_name2, column_name3) VALUES ('" . $title. "', '". $body ."', NOW())";





$result = mysql_query($sql, $db_object);





That will insert the current date and time into the 'column_name3' where 'column_name3' is the field name of your column containing the field type 'datetime'.





Because the field is of type 'datetime', you cannot use a blank space to be stored, it has to be in the pattern of '0000-00-00 00:00:00'.|||In addition to the suggestion above, you can also set the default value of your datetime column to be NOW() -- either through the command line or via phpMyAdmin.