Very useful information - thank you. Does anyone know of a site that may show a step by step process to do a date format conversion on a mysql db with PHP? I created a database about 3 years ago using varchar just to use a mm-dd-yyyy format and now I'm wishing I'd used the native mysql format of yyyy-mm-dd.

I'm posting to an older thread but am hopeful it still gets picked up. :-)

TIA

[QUOTE=NullPointer;869159]I would convert the date string to a timestamp and then use date() to format it however I want
[php]
$date = 'mm/dd/yyyy';
$timestamp = strtotime($date);

Just add a field for the date in the correct format and then do an update with a few substr's

Correct mysql date format should be Y-m-d H:M:S not mm/dd/yyyy

Try strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", strtotime($oldDate)) see what results you'll get.

@miki86
Actually, DATE type format is just yyyy-mm-dd. DATETIME is yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss, but the "hh:mm:ss" part can be omitted during inserts/updates.

@cov
To convert mm-dd-yyyy to yyyy-mm-dd:

PHP Code:

 $new_date = preg_replace('/(.*?)\-(.*?)\-(.*)/', '\3-\1-\2', $old_date);