Question

I’m trying convert a date that is stored in a mysql datebase as a VARCHAR (format example: 12/29/2012) and then I want to ORDER BY it so that the older dates are on top followed by fore current dates.

Eg: 
11-01-2012
11-05-2012
12-25-2012
...

Here is what I have so far, (PLEASE HELP!! THANKS)

<?php
        $listsql = "SELECT contact.id, CONCAT(lastname,', ',firstname) AS fullname, lastname, firstname,
                    STR_TO_DATE(daDATE,'%m-%d-%Y'), line1, line2, city, state, zip, phone1, phone2, country, whoAdded
                    FROM ". TABLE_CONTACT ." AS contact
                    LEFT JOIN ". TABLE_ADDRESS. " AS address ON contact.id=address.id AND contact.primaryAddType=address.type
                    LEFT JOIN ". TABLE_EMAIL ." AS email ON contact.id=email.id AND contact.primaryAddType=email.type
                    WHERE contact.hidden != 1
                    ORDER BY email.daDATE";
?>

Answer 1

As the comments have indicated to you. You REALLY should change the field type to a date or datetime (if you need H-M-S info). While you can certainly do string manipulation on a date value in a text type field, you will not have any way to use an index to make filtering/sorting/grouping that you may want to do on that field efficient.

If you need help converting I might suggest this approach. Add a new date or datetime column. Make sure to add an index on this column since you will be using it for ordering.

Then run this query:

UPDATE table SET new_date_column = STR_TO_DATE(old_date_column, '%m-%d-%Y');

Then delete the old column from the table.