Question

I have a SQL Query running on SQL Server 2008 R2 that returns a DATETIME column. The current formatting returns this:

2011-08-25 16:35:51.000

and what I would rather see is this:

8/25/2011 4:35 PM

Ideas of how I can modify my SELECT statement? Here a simple statement to work with…

SELECT DtCheckIn from Ticket

Thank you, Andrew

Answer 1

You could do the following:

SELECT convert(varchar, getdate(), 101) + RIGHT(convert(varchar, getdate(), 100), 7)

Resources on date time formatting:

http://anubhavg.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/how-to-format-datetime-date-in-sql-server-2005/

http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1145/date-and-time-conversions-using-sql-server/

EDIT – it’s a little hokey but it should give you what you are looking for.

Basically the first part SELECT convert(varchar, getdate(), 101) gives you your date 08/25/2011.

The second part SELECT convert(varchar, getdate(), 100) gives you your date and time in the format Aug 25 2011 5:35PM. You only want the time portion which is in the format hh:mmAM or hh:mmPM the total number of characters you want is 7. So if you change this to SELECT RIGHT(convert(varchar, getdate(), 100), 8) you will get your time 5:37PM. I used 8 in my RIGHT() to get an extra space. But now you only want your time not AM/PM so add SELECT LEFT(RIGHT(convert(varchar, getdate(), 100), 8), 6) and you will get your hh:mm.

Finally you want your AM/PM SELECT RIGHT(convert(varchar, getdate(), 100), 2) this will get you the last 2 characters.

Put it all together and you get:

SELECT convert(varchar, getdate(), 101) 
    + LEFT(RIGHT(convert(varchar, getdate(), 100), 8), 6)
    + ' ' + RIGHT(convert(varchar, getdate(), 100), 2)

Which gives your final product:

08/25/2011  5:39 PM