Question

What’s the SQL way of doing this:

$now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time())
SELECT * FROM table WHERE '$now' > time

Is it:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE now() > time

Answer 1

Your second example is the correct pure SQL method of doing it.

SELECT * FROM table WHERE NOW() > `time`

Although I find it more readable to reverse them, as it seems to make better logical sense to think the value of time is before now`. This really makes no difference though, and is based on my preference.

SELECT * FROM table WHERE `time` < NOW()

There are many more native MySQL date functions you can use in your queries, described in the MySQL documentation.

For example, to compare against 5 minutes ago, use DATE_SUB()

SELECT * FROM table WHERE `time` < DATE_SUB(NOW(), INTERVAL 5 MINUTE)