Question

I store date in the database under CREATED using select sysdate from dual and it will store the value 9/12/2012 9:26:05 AM Which is exactly what I want.

However, when I retrieve the information with PHP (e.g $query[0]['CREATED']) it returns 12-SEP-12

How can I prevent this?

Answer 1

When you retrieve a date, it has to converted from an abstract representation of a point-in-time to a string of characters. If you don’t specify a format, it will use one by default (usually NLS_DATE_FORMAT):

SQL> select sysdate from dual;

SYSDATE
---------
12-SEP-12

If you want a specific format, you have to use a conversion function, such as TO_CHAR:

SQL> SELECT to_char(sysdate, 'dd/mm/yyyy hh:mi:ss am') dt FROM DUAL;

DT
----------------------
12/09/2012 04:25:04 pm