Best way to get unix timestamp for current UTC time in MySQL

Question

I've been trying to use the following in mySQL to create a unix stamp for current UTC time

UNIX_TIMESTAMP(UTC_TIMESTAMP())

When I execute the query and get the result, it seems like mySQL is doing UTC conversation twice.

Eg. local time 9:07PM

Query above returned: 1374390482, which is next day 07:08:02 GMT, which is correct,

However, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(LOCALTIMESTAMP()) returns:

1374372551 02:09:11 GMT

which is the correct UTC unix timestamp.

So UNIX_TIMESTAMP automatically translates the date object's timezone to UTC (regardless if it's already UTC or not?)

Is there a better way or a single command just to get a UTC unix timestamp in mySQL?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17768426/best-way-to-get-unix-timestamp-for-current-utc-time-in-mysql

Answer 1

Try just:

UNIX_TIMESTAMP()

And see here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_unix-timestamp