We’re using MySQL as the relational data store in most of our projects. MySQL is a solid foundation, even with complex data types, like JSON. Sometimes we’re integrating apps with external APIs. We typically store responses from external services when requesting from them or synchronizing data with them. …

Storing and working with dates in the database is a common use case. You’re storing data and want to keep a reference of the creation date or when an update happens. MySQL comes with dozens of date and time functions. It facilitates your work when filtering or grouping rows …

It’s a stressful situation when your website isn’t available. In such situations, you're typically checking the application logs for hints. If you can’t find anything in the logs, you have to check the system load, like CPU and memory usage. What process is taking up most of …

We’re working on a running project and want to calculate statistics. For example, how many 10k runs happened during the competition? Or how many half-marathons and marathons did people run? Runners in the event use Strava to track their activities. We’re using Strava webhooks to process and store …

MySQL allows you to group data by certain attributes. Typically you’re grouping data when creating statistics. For example, you want to count the number of users made on a given day or within a selected month. This tutorial shows you how to group data in MySQL by date or …

You already have all your data in MySQL and for some decisions, you want to use statistics based on your data. For example, you may want to query the number of users that signed up during a given month. Or how many actions were triggered in a month. This tutorial …

MySQL comes with dozens of date and time functions. It’s great to have these functions at hand in your SQL queries. The database can already do the calculations you would do afterward in your code. One of these date functions is to get the last day of a month …

MySQL includes dozens of useful date and time functions. For example, you can retrieve the last day of a month using MySQL’s LAST_DAY function. But there’s no equivalent FIRST_DAY function. Yet, you can calculate the date of the first day of a month and this tutorial …