MySQL DATE_FORMAT Function

 MySQL DATE_FORMAT Function

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the MySQL DATE_FORMAT function to format a date value based on a specific format.

Introduction to MySQL DATE_FORMAT function

To format a date value to a specific format, you use the DATE_FORMAT function. The syntax of the DATE_FORMAT the function is as follows:

DATE_FORMAT(date,format)

The DATE_FORMAT the function accepts two arguments:

• date : is a valid date value that you want to format
• format : is a format string that consists of predefined specifiers. Each specifier is preceded by a percentage character ( % ). See the table below for a list of predefined specifiers.

The DATE_FORMAT the function returns a string whose character set and collation depend on the settings of the client’s connection.

The following table illustrates the specifiers and the meanings that you can use to construct a date format string:

Specifier	Meaning
%a	Three-characters abbreviated weekday names e.g., Mon, Tue, Wed, etc.
%b	Three-characters abbreviated month name e.g., Jan, Feb, Mar, etc.
%c	Month in numeric e.g., 1, 2, 3…12
%D	Day of the month with English suffix e.g., 0th, 1st, 2nd, etc.
%d	Day of the month with leading zero if it is 1 number e.g., 00, 01,02, …31
%e	Day of the month without leading zero e.g., 1,2,…31
%f	Microseconds in the range of 000000..999999
%H	An hour in 24-hour format with leading zero e.g., 00..23
%h	An hour in 12-hour format with leading zero e.g., 01, 02…12
%I	Same as %h
%i	Minutes with leading zero e.g., 00, 01,…59
%j	Day of the year with leading zero e.g., 001,002,…366
%k	An hour in 24-hour format without leading zero e.g., 0,1,2…23
%l	An hour in 12-hour format without leading zero e.g., 1,2…12
%M	Full month name e.g., January, February,…December
%m	Month name with leading zero e.g., 00,01,02,…12
%p	AM or PM, depending on other time specifiers
%r	Time in 12-hour format hh:mm:ss AM or PM
%S	Seconds with leading zero 00,01,…59
%s	Same as %S
%T	Time in 24-hour format hh:mm:ss
%U	Week number with leading zero when the first day of the week is Sunday e.g., 00,01,02…53
%u	Week number with leading zero when the first day of the week is Monday e.g., 00,01,02…53
%V	Same as %U; it is used with %X
%v	Same as %u; it is used with %x
%W	Full name of weekday e.g., Sunday, Monday,…, Saturday
%w	Weekday in number (0=Sunday, 1= Monday, etc.)
%X	Year for the week in four digits where the first day of the week is Sunday; often used with %V
%x	Year for the week, where the first day of the week is Monday, four digits; used with %v
%Y	Four digits year e.g., 2000 and 2001.
%y	Two digits year e.g., 10,11, and 12.
%%	Add percentage (%) character to the output

The following are some commonly used date format strings:

DATE_FORMAT string	Formatted date
%Y-%m-%d	2013-07-04
%e/%c/%Y	4/7/2013
%c/%e/%Y	7/4/2013
%d/%m/%Y	4/7/2013
%m/%d/%Y	7/4/2013
%e/%c/%Y %H:%i	4/7/2013 11:20
%c/%e/%Y %H:%i	7/4/2013 11:20
%d/%m/%Y %H:%i	4/7/2013 11:20
%m/%d/%Y %H:%i	7/4/2013 11:20
%e/%c/%Y %T	4/7/2013 11:20
%c/%e/%Y %T	7/4/2013 11:20
%d/%m/%Y %T	4/7/2013 11:20
%m/%d/%Y %T	7/4/2013 11:20
%a %D %b %Y	Thu 4th Jul 2013
%a %D %b %Y %H:%i	Thu 4th Jul 2013 11:20
%a %D %b %Y %T	Thu 4th Jul 2013 11:20:05
%a %b %e %Y	Thu Jul 4, 2013
%a %b %e %Y %H:%i	Thu Jul 4, 2013, 11:20
%a %b %e %Y %T	Thu Jul 4, 2013, 11:20:05
%W %D %M %Y	Thursday 4th July 2013
%W %D %M %Y %H:%i	Thursday 4th July 2013 11:20
%W %D %M %Y %T	Thursday 4th July 2013 11:20:05
%l:%i %p %b %e, %Y	7/4/2013 11:20
%M %e, %Y	4-Jul-13
%a, %d %b %Y %T	Thu, 04 Jul 2013 11:20:05

MySQL DATE_FORMAT examples

Let’s take a look at the orders the table in the sample database.

To select the order’s data and format the date value, you use the following statement:

SELECT 
    orderNumber,
    DATE_FORMAT(orderdate, '%Y-%m-%d') orderDate,
    DATE_FORMAT(requireddate, '%a %D %b %Y') requireddate,
    DATE_FORMAT(shippedDate, '%W %D %M %Y') shippedDate
FROM
    orders;

We formatted the order date, required date, and shipped date of each order based on different date formats specified by the format strings.

MySQL DATE_FORMAT with ORDER BY

See the following example:

SELECT 
    orderNumber,
    DATE_FORMAT(shippeddate, '%W %D %M %Y') shippeddate
FROM
    orders
WHERE
    shippeddate IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY shippeddate;

In the query, we selected all orders whose shipped dates are not NULL and sorted the orders by the shipped date. However, the orders were not sorted correctly.

The reason is that we used shippeddate it as the alias for the output of the DATE_FORMAT function, which is a string, the ORDER BY clause took the alias and sorted the orders based on string values, not date values.

To fix this problem, we have to use an alias that is different from the column name; see the following statement:

SELECT 
    orderNumber,
    DATE_FORMAT(shippeddate, '%W %D %M %Y') 'Shipped date'
FROM
    orders
WHERE
    shippeddate IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY shippeddate;

In this tutorial, we have shown you how to use the MySQL DATE_FORMAT function to format the date based on a specified format.