Question

I have a column in a MySQL database which is currently all different lengths an example would be –

Reference (Column Name)
12930
1829
892
182902

I need them all to be 12 characters long with 0’s added to the front to make them that length, so they example above would need to become –

Reference (Column Name)
000000012930
000000001829
000000000892
000000182902

Is there an SQL query I can run to do this, if not what would the best way to do this be?

Answer 1

use zerofill if you use numbers (int, bigint, float etc…)

ALTER TABLE a modify column min int(12) /* other properties */ zerofill;

if you use varchar or char, you have to use PHP str_pad:

echo str_pad($input, 12, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);