Question

I have a variable that a user specifies $start_date in format of y-m-d.

so let’s say for example $start_date = '2011-10-27';

In my database I have a DATETIME field, let’s call it sample_date that looks like this
2011-10-27 14:15:20

When I run sql query using $start_date.. do I have to convert to compare the dates such as

SELECT * from content WHERE sample_date >= $start_date

or should I convert it somehow first

Answer 1

You don’t need to convert the value as long as you’ve validated the format, but you should definitely sanitize the input to prevent XSS attacks and other nastiness. A calendar drop-down would be good here as well.

EDIT:
Whoa now… I see you’ve edited your question and the formats are different. That changes everything! Michael’s comment is the correct answer, use strtotime() function to convert the date to a unix timestamp, then recreate the date in the proper format needed… like so… date(‘Y-m-d’, strtotime($start_date))