Question

I am currently creating a website on which I can add videos. When I add a video, I need to give a release date, formatted like: “21-09-2012”.

Now, when I use the simple ORDER BY command, it only sorts on the first two digits.

Does anyone know how can I fix this?

Answer 1

It sounds like you are storing your date field as a string instead. If that it the case then you will need to convert the value to a date before trying to order it:

SELECT  STR_TO_DATE(yourdate, '%d-%m-%Y')
FROM    yourtable

MySQL documentation on STR_TO_DATE

However, you should be storing your dates in a date datatype and not as a string value. Then you will not have to perform these types of conversions.

You can also do the conversion in the ORDER BY statement itself:

order by STR_TO_DATE(yourdate, '%d-%m-%Y')