Question

I’m trying to fetch records from a table in MySQL 5.5 (Community Server) which has 22 fields in total, the first field is of type DATETIME, and I want that field formatted with DATE_FORMAT() method, while I want to fetch remaining fields as they are. So basically what I’m trying to do is something like this

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(fdate,'%r %d-%m-%Y'),* FROM userdetails;

While I know this is invalid syntax, and currently I’m accomplishing this by selecting all the remaining fields manually which obviously makes the query longer. So is there a more elegant way to do the same? I also thought to use two different queries where 1st will fetch the formatted date and second will be usual

SELECT * FROM userdetails;

But since I fetch records sorted by date field itself, I guess using two different queries may lead to conflicts on order of records returned.

Answer 1

You can use

SELECT  DATE_FORMAT(fdate,'%r %d-%m-%Y'), ud.*
FROM    userdetails ud

which will select all columns (including the original fdate) along with the formatted value.

There is no way to select “almost all columns” except listing them explicitly.