Question

I am pulling records out of my mysql database using php and want to order them by a database field called expdate.

The dates for the reminders are stored in the table in this format 17-04-12 as varchar.

I am using the following code to pull all the records out and order them by the expdate column.

    <table border="0" style="text-align:left;">
      <tr style="text-align:left;">
        <th style="text-align:left;" width="200px"  scope="col">Name</th>
        <th style="text-align:left;" width="200px"  scope="col">Email</th>
      <th style="text-align:left;" width="200px" scope="col">Telephone</th>
      <th style="text-align:left;" width="200px" scope="col">Current Cover Expires</th>
      </tr>
    <?php
    $today = date("d-m-y");
    $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM ymeg_chronoforms_data_NewsletterSubscribe ORDER BY expdate")or die(mysql_error());

    echo '<tr style="text-align:left;">';
    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
      {
        echo '<td style="text-align:left;">';  
      echo $row['name'];
      echo '</td>'; 
      echo '<td style="text-align:left;">'; 
      echo $row['email'];
         echo '</td>'; 
    echo '<td style="text-align:left;">'; 
      echo $row['tel'];
         echo '</td>'; 
     echo '<td style="text-align:left;">'; 
      echo $row['expdate'];
        echo '</td>'; 
      echo "</tr>";
      }

      ?>


    </table>

The problem is, the columns are being sorted quite randomly, it outputs the records and sorts them by this date order :

08-07-12
17-05-12
17-05-13

Answer 1

try

order by STR_TO_DATE(expdate, '%d-%m-%y')

(and next time use real Date format… for Date datas 😉 )