From: David Blomstrom
Date: June 22 2004 6:40am
Subject: New to Dates - Plain English Please
List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/167670
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I  haven't worked with dates yet and wondered if
someone could give me an overview in plain English.

At the moment, I'm working on a table with a column of
dates in this format:

March 2, 2003
July 7, 2004

If I understand the Manual, the correct format for
these dates in a MySQL table would be like this:

03-02-2003
07-07-2004

Am I right?

When I create a DATE field, do I need to designate a
Length/Value, Attribute, etc.? If so, how long is
07-07-2004 - 8 characters, or ten?

And is it also correct that you can manipulate dates
in this format to display in other formats? For
example, 03-02-2003 could be displayed as March 2,
2003?

I THINK this is what the Manual is talking about
here...

DATE_FORMAT(date,format)
    Formats the date value according to the format
string. The following specifiers may be used in the
format string:
    Specifier 	Description
    %a 	Abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
    %b 	Abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)
    %c 	Month, numeric (0..12)
    %D 	Day of the month with English suffix (0th,
1st, 2nd, 3rd, ...)
    %d 	Day of the month, numeric (00..31)
    %e 	Day of the month, numeric (0..31)

If so, this must be something you do with PHP, right?

I guess the most important thingn I need to know is
what format to put my dates in. If 07-07-2004 is the
standard format, and if I can print/display that in
various ways, then I can figure the rest out when I
get to it.

Thanks.


		
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