Question

I know that it is possible to reformat the DateTime data type of the current date and time by using select convert. However, I havent been able to find a method to reformat an existing column (DateTime data type) to: hh:mm:ss yyyy/mm/dd. Or even better, I would like to reformat it to show time only. I dont want to simply convert to time data type because I am working with a chart that accepts either Date or Date time. But what I really want to display on that specific axis of the chart is time. Is there any way to reformat DateTime to my requirements? Thanks.

Answer 1

SQL Server’s convert function can take an optional style argument depending upon the datatype. This is how you can get a datetime converted to a string in a variety of formats. For example, try running:

select convert(varchar(30), getdate(), 108) -- returns hh:mi:ss

You can replace getdate() in this example with a column name as well.

There are many styles available, as shown in the documentation.

Note that you will be returning a varchar, so you may want to sort by the original column’s datatype.