Question

I have a common field in a database table on SQL Server 2008. The type on the field is nvarchar(255). That field holds a number of different types of values coming from an application.

I currently have need to turn values in the field from a format of “Jul 19 2011 12:00AM” for example to a format of “2011-07-19 00:00:00.000”.

I know I can get this back in a query format with the statement:

SELECT CONVERT(datetime, value, 121)
  FROM [Table]
  where ...

This gives me a display format that I am looking for, but when I try to update the table with the corrected format using the following query, it converts it back to the “Jul 19 2011 12:00AM” format.

Update query:

Update [Table]
  set Value = CONVERT(datetime, t2.value, 121)
  from [Table] t1
  inner join
  (SELECT ID, CONVERT(datetime, value, 121) as value
  FROM [Table]) t2
  on t2.ID = t1.ID

Is there any way to force the destination nvarchar(255) field to maintain the “2011-07-19 00:00:00.000” format specified from the convert?

Answer 1

Using something like this, changing getdate() by your date field:

select cast(datepart(yyyy,getdate()) as char(4)) + '-' 
        + replace(str(datepart(mm,getdate()),2),' ','0') + '-'
        + replace(str(datepart(dd,getdate()),2),' ','0') + ' '
        + replace(str(datepart(hh,getdate()),2),' ','0') + ':'
        + replace(str(datepart(mi,getdate()),2),' ','0') + ':'
        + replace(str(datepart(ss,getdate()),2),' ','0') + '.'
        + replace(str(datepart(ms,getdate()),3),' ','0')

You can find it comfortable to make a function to get this format.

Please read carefully the question before marking it as a bad question. “Store a date in nvarchar field”. This man wants to store a date as “TEXT” in a field, with the format he wants!! Please, be more careful.