Is there a list of best practice MySQL data types for common applications. For example, the list would contain the best data type and size for id, ip address, email, subject, summary, description content, url, date (timestamp and human readable), geo points, media height, media width, media duration, etc
Thank you!!!
i don't know of any, so let's start one!
numeric ID/auto_increment primary keys: use an unsigned integer. do not use 0 as a value. and keep in mind the maximum value of of the various sizes, i.e. don't use int if you don't need 4 billion values when the 16 million offered by mediumint will suffice.
dates: unless you specifically need dates/times that are outside the supported range of mysql's DATE and TIME types, use them! if you instead use unix timestamps, you have to convert them to use the built-in date and time functions. if your app needs unix timestamps, you can always convert the standard date and time data types on the way out using unix_timestamp().
ip addresses: use inet_aton() and inet_ntoa() since it easily compacts an ip address in to 4 bytes and gives you the ability to do range searches that utilize indexes.