Question

I’m using PHP & MySQL to go into a database and change the value of a date. A conversion of date format is required going from the user interface to the database. The code I’m using to convert and push to database is…

<?php
require_once("../../connect.php");
$e = $_GET['e'];
$start = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['start']);
$updatestring = "UPDATE tbl_events SET start=STR_TO_DATE('".$start."', '%m/%d/%Y %h:%i' ) 
WHERE id=".$e;
$update_results = mysql_query($updatestring);
header("Location: event.php?e=".$e);
?>

When the value is put through the script all pm events are converted to am.

EXAMPLE

INPUT= 08/20/2011 04:00 pm
OUTPUT= 08/20/2011 4:00am

The

start=STR_TO_DATE('".$start."', '%m/%d/%Y %h:%i' )

part of the code works fine in my create event script. Can anyone tell me why its not working in this situation?

Answer 1

Essentially, you’re passing more data to MySQL than you’re explaining what to do with. You’re passing “8/20/2011 04:00 pm”, but only giving enough information to interpret the “8/20/2011 04:00” portion. Since MySQL doesn’t know what to do with the “pm”, it just ignores it and makes a bad assumption, defaulting to AM.

MySQL uses %p to denote the AM/PM portion of the format. If you add that to your function call, it should work.

Try this:

start=STR_TO_DATE('".$start."', '%m/%d/%Y %h:%i %p' )