Check if a date is upcoming or past in MySQL

Question

I have two columns in a table

• event_date ( value is 09/22/2013)
• event_time ( value is 7:11 PM )

Now I want to write a query which should returns row which has time and date in future or past.

I wrote something like this

SELECT *
FROM events e
WHERE CONCAT(e.event_date, ' ', e.event_time) <= DATE_FORMAT(NOW(), '%m/%d/%Y  %g:%i %a')

But it didn't work, it's just one of those things which you never know what's wrong with them

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

SELECT * 
FROM Events
WHERE event_date < CURRENT_DATE()
      OR (event_date = CURRENT_DATE() AND event_time <= CURRENT_TIME())
   

This has the advantage of using any index that might exist on event_date.