Question

I am trying this query:

SELECT ARTICLE_NO,      USERNAME,      ACCESSSTARTS,      ARTICLE_NAME,      date_format( ACCESSSTARTS, '%d %m %Y' ) AS shortDate  FROM AUCTIONS  WHERE upper( ARTICLE_NAME ) LIKE '%hardy%'  LIMIT 0 , 10; 

Which works fine, but shortDate is null, and I am unsure why.

The contents of the database is like so:

ARTICLE_NO    USERNAME     ACCESSSTARTS          ARTICLE_NAME  shortDate 110313660559  banger-wear  17.11.2008 13:24:56   acolshirt     NULL 

edit: The accessstarts field is not a datetime field but a varchar. I am unsure of what to do. Should I simply strip everything after the first space in ACCESSSTARTS to display only the date?

Or would it be better to convert the column to a datetime field, and if so, how would I specify that it should be in %D.%M.%Y format instead of the default, which apprantly starts with %Y

Answer 1

The formatting of ACCESSSTARTS looks like the date you have there is a varchar, but DATE_FORMAT expects a DATE or DATETIME value.

YOu could try using STR_TO_DATE to turn that string into a date value first, e.g.

SELECT     ACCESSSTARTS,     date_format(str_to_date(ACCESSSTARTS, '%d.%m.%Y %k:%i:%s'), '%d %m %Y' ) AS shortDate FROM AUCTIONS  WHERE upper( ARTICLE_NAME ) LIKE '%hardy%'  LIMIT 0 , 10;