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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-17T19:54:03+00:00

For example the following query works fine: SELECT * FROM quotes WHERE expires_at <=

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For example the following query works fine:

SELECT * 
FROM quotes 
WHERE expires_at <= '2010-10-15 10:00:00'

But this is obviously performing a ‘string’ comparison – I was wondering if there was a function built in to MySQL that specifically does ‘datetime’ comparisons.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    …this is obviously performing a ‘string’ comparison

    No – if the date/time format matches the supported format, MySQL performs implicit conversion to convert the value to a DATETIME, based on the column it is being compared to. Same thing happens with:

    WHERE int_column = '1'

    …where the string value of “1” is converted to an INTeger because int_column‘s data type is INT, not CHAR/VARCHAR/TEXT.

    If you want to explicitly convert the string to a DATETIME, the STR_TO_DATE function would be the best choice:

    WHERE expires_at <= STR_TO_DATE('2010-10-15 10:00:00', '%Y-%m-%d %H:%i:%s')
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