Question

My select statement in PHP is

  "select * from table";

I use the following PHP statement to display date & time of MySQL field.

  <?php
      echo $row['mdate'];
  ?>

The result come like this

  2010-03-09 16:59:18

I want to view the result in the following format

  09-03-2010 16:59:18

and I want to view the result in the following format

  09-03-2010 4:59:18 PM

without defining any extra function. I can only modify my echo statement.

  <?php echo $row['msgdate']; ?>

     or

I can also modify my select statement.

Answer 1

You can do the formatting directly in the database as Frank Heikens shows in his answer, or you can do it in PHP. Convert the mySQL date value to a UNIX timestamp using

$timestamp = strtotime($row["mdate"]);

then you can use all options of date() to format it, for example:

echo date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $timestamp); // returns 09-03-2010 16:59:18

both approaches are equally valid; I personally like to modify the value in PHP.