Question

I’m a little knew to SQL & PHP and have been given the task of displaying some information from the database. I know how to query my database and display the info into tables on screen using PHP and so forth; however this time I’ve been given a slightly different challenge.

I have information stored in the DateTime format in the SQL database and whilst retrieving it I need to strip the time and display only the date. I’ve had a read through many of the date/time functions for SQL but for some reason this seems to be going almost straight over my head. I’ve had a browse of a few sites including the two links below, but I’m having a hard time understanding how to do such things within PHP etc. If someone could steer me in the right direction that would be excellent!

2 somewhat related threads I’ve browsed:
http://www.gfxvoid.com/forums/showthread.php?28576-PHP-Time-Date-Display
http://blogs.x2line.com/al/archive/2006/02/17/1458.aspx

Logically, am I supposed to query the DateTime and then use PHP to reformat it the way I wish to display it? Or am I supposed to format the datetime using an SQL query?

Thanks very much!

Answer 1

Just use the DATE function around the date time.

SQL Column: created_at

2012-05-09 13:46:25

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(DATE(created_at), '%D %M %Y') FROM Table

Returns:

9th May 2012

EDIT as per comment:

To use it in PHP, you can do something like the following:

Query: (Notice the AS clean_date)

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(DATE(created_at), '%D %M %Y') AS clean_date FROM Table

then in in php:

<?php
echo "<tr><td>{$row['clean_date']}</td>";
?>