Question

I have a column which is a string, it holds values like that: 11.05.2012 05:22:12

Now I want to get all rows that have a date <= 30.09.2011 in that column. I tried

DATE_FORMAT(my_column_with_the_string_date, "%Y-%m-%d") <= '2011-09-30'

but this failed (returns no results). Any ideas?

Answer 1

What you need is the STR_TO_DATE() function.

SELECT
*
FROM yourTable
WHERE
STR_TO_DATE(my_column_with_the_string_date, '%d.%m.%Y') <= '2011-09-30'

Read more about it here.