Question

I have a mysql table called test, the structure code is given below

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `test` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `assigned_date` date NOT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB

And the table is containing following data :

INSERT INTO `test` (`id`, `name`, `assigned_date`) VALUES
(0, 'A', '2012-12-23'),
(0, 'B', '2012-12-25');

Now the problem is when I run the following query it doesn’t return me any row.

SELECT name 
FROM test 
WHERE 
     DATE_FORMAT(assigned_date, '%m/%d/%Y') >= '12/01/2012'
     AND 
     DATE_FORMAT(assigned_date, '%m/%d/%Y') <= '01/02/2013'

But When I use the following commands it returns me two rows as expected.

SELECT name 
FROM test 
WHERE
     assigned_date >= STR_TO_DATE('12/01/2012', '%m/%d/%Y')
     AND 
     assigned_date  <= STR_TO_DATE('01/02/2013', '%m/%d/%Y')

What is the difference ? Why DATE_FORMAT didn’t work ?

Please Help with this I have used date_format function through out a site. Now it seems like I have to update the entire site.

Thanks.

Answer 1

DATE_FORMAT converts DATE to STRING.

STR_TO_DATE converts STRING to DATE.

From MySQL Docs

• DATE_FORMAT
• STR_TO_DATE