mysql query - format date on output?

Question

In my table, dates are stored like this: 2011-03-03T13:30:00

I\'m trying to output dates like this: March 3, 2011 1:30 PM

I\'d much rather work it into the q

Answer 1

You basically have two different operations you may need to perform when handling dates: date to string and vice versa. The functions you can use are DATE_FORMAT() and STR_TO_DATE(). Full reference can be found in the manual.

Usage example:

SELECT
    DATE_FORMAT(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, '%d/%m/%Y %H:%i:%s'),
    STR_TO_DATE('31/12/2001 23:55:00', '%d/%m/%Y %H:%i:%s')

If your dates are not real dates but strings, you'll need to convert twice: from string to date and again from date to string:

SELECT
    STR_TO_DATE('2011-03-03T13:30:00', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%i:%s'),
    DATE_FORMAT(STR_TO_DATE('2011-03-03T13:30:00', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%i:%s'), '%M %e, %Y %l:%i %p')