Question

I have a mysql table that has a column that stores dates but isn’t in the date format, it’s a varchar.

The column is called data_hora and have dates in the dd/mm/yy format, example: 06/09/2012 15:00, so I had to convert to date format in mysql query.

And I need to get the closest date and hour before or after the current time, I came up with the following code, but for some reason it seems to get only closest date but not hour, weird?!?!

SELECT str_to_date(data_hora, '%d/%m/%Y %H:%i') AS data_hora 
FROM requisicoes 
ORDER BY abs(DATE_FORMAT(NOW(),'%d/%m/%Y %H:%i') - data_hora) LIMIT 1

Help 🙁

Answer 1

try this:

Your ORDER BY Clause has to be changed

SELECT str_to_date(data_hora, '%d/%m/%Y %H:%i') AS data_hora 
FROM requisicoes 
ORDER BY abs(TIMEDIFF( NOW() , str_to_date(data_hora, '%d/%m/%Y %H:%i'))) LIMIT 1